Wounded Tiger Read online

Jake leaned to the interpreter. “What did he just say?”

  “I’m sorry,” the interpreter said, “the judge ordered you not be told.”

  Jake’s mouth fell open and he turned to Bill on his left. After enduring the farce of a sham trial he felt the least they could do was to tell them their verdict. Instead, the shackled men were silently shuffled outside by soldiers and into another structure where they were each shoved into separate six by five-foot wooden cells. Defeated, Jake stood and watched the door close him into near total darkness, listened to the wooden crossbar clunk into place, heard the key turn, the metal bolt slide, and the final clank of the lock. The guard momentarily peered back through the narrow slot in the door looking him directly in the eyes, then walked away. The last meaningful thing Jake still had was finally taken away – his friends.

  Chapter 68

  October 15, 1942. Kiangwan Military Prison, Shanghai, China.

  In a grass clearing beside a Chinese cemetery, Captain Tatsuta, the warden and commanding officer of the Kiangwan Military Prison, looked over the three condemned men, each with his hands tied behind his back: Lieutenant Bill Farrow, pilot of the Bat out of Hell; Sargent Harry Spatz, gunner; and Lieutenant Dean “Jungle Jim” Hallmark, pilot of The Green Hornet.

  As the warden, he knew it was his duty, yet at the same time had come to know and even respect the men he was now ordered to execute. He struggled with how best to put their minds at ease before they breathed their last.

  The sound of soldiers hammering echoed in the otherwise silent yard. Three small, newly constructed wooden crosses were tapped into the ground behind the prisoners. Six rifled soldiers stood at attention beside a small table burning incense. Two doctors in white were off to the side while three other soldiers stood guard. A late afternoon breeze ruffled the untucked shirt tails of the three prisoners.

  Tatsuta had been informed that, in a gesture of mercy from the Emperor, only three of the eight captive fliers were to be shot. The others were to be kept in solitary confinement until some final decision was made on what to do with them, pending the development of the war.

  The day before, he gave each of the three men pens and paper to write out their final words, good-byes, and last requests to those they loved. Perhaps most excruciating were the words from Bill Farrow to his fiancé, Lib Sims, a girl he promised to marry as soon as he was home again, which they both expected would be a month or two after his brief mission.

  An officer read off the charges in Japanese followed by an interpreter who summarized the charges in English. When complete, they both bowed and stepped to the side.

  Tatsuta walked up to the three men and spoke in English, first looking them one by one, eye to eye. “I feel sorry for you. Your lives were short, but your names will be remembered forever.”

  Bill stood uprightly and fully raised his head. “Tell the folks back home we died bravely. Will you?”

  Capt. Tatsuta nodded. He gathered his courage and gave to his prisoners the best he had to offer. “Christ died on a cross and you on your part must die on a cross as well, but when you are executed, when you die on your cross, you will be honored as gods.” He hoped, in some way, to give them the most honorable deaths according to their beliefs, to the best of his understanding. “When you are bound to the cross, your faith and the cross will be united. Therefore, have faith.” Perhaps this would give them some hope in death, he thought. “Do you have anything else to say?”

  Bill, Harry and Dean looked at each other. Bill shook his head.

  Captain Tatsuta bowed deeply to the airmen, stood upright, and then nodded to the soldiers who guided each man to his cross, pushed him down into a kneeling position, and tied his arms to the horizontal crossbar with another loop of rope to hold up his head to the center post. Each man was blindfolded with a white strip of cloth. Another soldier carefully painted a round, black dot in the center of the blindfold over the center each man’s forehead.

  When the soldiers returned to their positions, Tatsuta waited, then called out in Japanese, “Attention! Face the target!”

  The soldiers in two rows of three each turned ninety degrees toward the prisoners.

  With a clean motion, Tatsuta drew his sabre from its scabbard with his right hand and thrust it into the air as the afternoon sun gleamed off the blade. This was his duty, and he wouldn’t hesitate.

  “Prepare!”

  The first row of three drew their rifles to their shoulders, cocked the steel bolts in unison, and aimed at the black marks on the blindfolds. The second row of gunners was prepared in the event the first marksman’s weapon misfired or he missed.

  With his sabre still raised in his right hand, Tatsuta raised his left hand into the air and held it stationary for several seconds. He looked away from the men to the horizon, then dropped his left hand. “Fire!”

  A cluster of three shots reverberated through the cemetery grounds as the three, limp bodies slumped forward and the blood trickled down their faces, dripping onto the dust below. The two doctors in white walked toward the victims.

  Their letters were never mailed.

  Chapter 69

  The following morning.

  Jake found himself handcuffed and escorted to a common courtyard by impeccably dressed armed soldiers. He saw others carrying new shovels. It didn’t look good. He and the other four prisoners were ordered to wash in a trough. Although forbidden to speak to his fellow prisoners, one look of the eyes told him they were all thinking the same thing. This was the end. Jake casually measured the height of the walls glancing bottom to top – too high to climb over.

  Soon they were prompted to line up and were escorted back into the same, tiny military courtroom they were in almost two months earlier, standing before the same judges with their same ridiculous wigs. Fifteen armed soldiers surrounded the five gaunt, bearded prisoners. Everything in Jake wanted to believe that their three missing buddies had been transferred somewhere else, but he knew better. Now it was his turn to hear why, when, and how he and the others would be executed. Shot? Beheaded? Japs were scum.

  The center judge nodded to a heavyset officer holding several sheets of paper in trembling hands, sweating profusely. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, then began in English, “It has been proven beyond all doubt that the defendants, motivated by a false sense of glory, carried on indiscriminate bombing of schools and hospitals and machine gunned innocent civilians with complete disregard for the rules of war ...”

  Jake seethed hearing the trumped up charges for the first time in the kangaroo court. The Japanese knew full well they’d hit military targets. It didn’t really matter what he was saying anymore. They had their verdict and only wanted to find some reasons to prop it up. It was all whitewashed propaganda now.

  Great beads of sweat dripped down the side of the reader’s face. “The tribunal, acting under the law, hereby sentences the defendants to death!”

  “You sons of bitches!” Chase Nielson shouted as a bayonetted rifle quickly guided him back in line.

  Jake clenched his teeth. Soldiers gripped their rifles more firmly.

  “But, through the graciousness of His Majesty, the Emperor, your sentences are hereby commuted to life imprisonment with special treatment.” The officer exhaled deeply and once again wiped the perspiration from his face.

  Jake had spent the last two months in solitary confinement, twenty-three and a half hours each day, eating rotten fish heads and maggot infested rice, and picking lice from his hair, yet a strange sense of joy breezed over him. Moments earlier, he’d been totally resigned to immediate death.

  The soldiers marched the prisoners back to their cells and closed them back in, one at a time. Jake’s eyes penetrated the wooden walls that had become his only friend. The idea of freedom was a million miles away. But even if he hoped to survive to the end of the war, he knew he’d be executed before he’d ever be turned over to the Americans. His life sentence seemed more of a delayed death penalty, but at least he was sti
ll alive, for now.

  Chapter 70

  December, 1942. Madras, Oregon.

  “Oh my!” Mrs. Andrus admiringly lifted up a certificate to the light as she sat at the kitchen table with Glenn, his three sisters, and Mr. Andrus huddled around her. “Jake’s been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross!”

  Mr. Andrus smiled. He knew he didn’t mean it, but he wished he did.

  “Look at that!” Helen said.

  “Who would’ve ever believed it?” Glenn asked. “My big brother!”

  “Well, I’m going to put this right next to his picture on my dresser.” Mrs. Andrus turned to her husband. “Hiram, you find us a nice frame, will you?”

  Mr. Andrus reached out his farm-worn hand and gently grasped the sheet of paper. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” He smiled at his wife, then looked at the children, who glanced at each other, carefully trying not to spoil their mother’s dream that somehow Jake was still alive. There had been no word about Jake or any of the downed raiders since the public news about the raid eight months earlier. Nothing. Mr. Andrus knew that no news was bad news. He smiled again. “I’ll have it up for you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 71

  December, 1942. Hopevale.

  Under tall trees in the warm, humid morning air, Jimmy stood before sixty or so people singing together in their open air church, sitting on seats of stacked stones in a semi-circle beneath overhanging trees. Local Filipinos, students from the college, and some miners all joined the dozen or so missionaries and teachers who made their home in Hopevale and the nearby village of Katipunan. Frank played away on the foot-pumped reed organ while Jimmy led into the final stanza at the front beside a rock altar with a makeshift cross adorned with a large bouquet of wild flowers at the base. He proclaimed every word with honesty:

  “In Christ now meet both east and west,

  in him meet south and north;

  all Christ-like souls are one in him

  throughout the whole wide earth.”

  The final notes of the organ held, then stopped and reverberated through the trees. Jimmy patted his face with a rag. The return to near silence was broken by the squeals of a family of macaque monkeys from the boughs above. “I thank you all for making the hike to be with us this morning. You can visit any time you’d like. God’s best to you.”

  As the meeting broke up, a weathered middle-aged Filipina woman with her daughter carrying a burlap sack approached Jimmy. The twelve year old girl held out the bag and spoke in her best English, “Cassava roots and rice. For you and friends.”

  “Thank you so much,” Jimmy said as he leaned in and gave the young girl a gentle hug. “We couldn’t survive without the love and help of people like you and your mother.”

  The woman shook Jimmy’s hand and wouldn’t let go as she looked around at the encompassing green foliage. “It so strange that most beautiful church I be in has no walls.” She looked Jimmy in the eyes. “But isn’t that way it should be? Different people, one God, no walls between any?”

  Jimmy was humbled by her simple insight. He thought it ironic that it took a brutal war that divided nations to bring their small band of various people in the mountains so close together. He smiled. “No walls. No walls between anyone is good.”

  Jennie sat on the step in front of her hut under the watchful eyes of a concerned Filipino father as she wrapped a grass strand around a bamboo splint on a young boy’s finger. Charma held his palm steady. “Leave this on, OK? Don’t take it off. Come back next week and I’ll look at it. It’s going to be OK.” She looked up at his relieved father. “Don’t let him take it off for anything and make sure ...”

  “Hey, hey, HEY!” Charma said just as she glanced over her shoulder in time to catch a macaque dragging off a small bunch of bananas from a hutch. “Come back here, you rascal!”

  Jennie put her hands on her hips and smiled as the monkey disappeared into the jungle. “Y’know, that’s really impolite! Next time just ask!” she shouted.

  Charma brushed some dirt from her arm. “I guess he’s hungry, too.”

  Chapter 72

  December 28, 1942, Hopevale.

  Jimmy anxiously watched Jack as he dialed in a dented battery-powered shortwave radio as the entire Hopevale group stood silently in front of Jimmy’s place. Half a dozen Filipinos and four other armed guerrillas joined the audience – two white and two Filipino men. Besides their weapons, the guerrillas were often identified by their wavy brimmed khaki jungle hats. Jack and another gold miner-turned-guerrilla helped maintain the radio for the Hopevale people as it was their only connection to the outside world.

  Jimmy was waiting to hear a speech by President Roosevelt. A very important one. It had been just over a year since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, when he was confident that the war wouldn’t last more than six months. He was also certain the Japanese would never attack the Philippines and even more certain that they would never take it. Now he wasn’t certain of anything, but, like everyone else, he was impatient to hear exactly what the United States was going to do, and even more importantly, when. He’d heard a lot of promises of rescue, but he really wanted to hear it from the President himself.

  Through a high frequency hum and crackle of interference, President Roosevelt’s voice sounded through the speaker in his halting, deliberate tone: “As President of the United States, I know that I speak for all our people on this solemn occasion. The resources of the United States, of the British Empire, of the Netherland’s East Indies, and of the Chinese Republic have been dedicated by their people to the utter and complete defeat of the Japanese warlords.”

  Charma folded her arms. Jimmy stood motionless with one ear facing the radio, carefully examining the meaning of each word.

  “In this great struggle of the Pacific, the loyal Americans of the Philippine Islands are called upon to play a crucial role. They have played, and they are playing tonight, their part with the greatest gallantry. As President, I wish to express to them my feeling of sincere admiration for the fight they are now making.”

  Jack glanced across at a Filipino guerrilla who gave a slight grin. His dark skin was slick with sweat and his eyes beamed confidence. The loosely banded guerrillas had already introduced themselves to the Japanese by a series of random hit and run attacks near the Villar copper mines in Sibalom, about fifteen miles to the southwest, extracting heavy losses and disrupting the Japanese operations.

  “The people of the United States will never forget what the people of the Philippine Islands are doing this day and will do in the days to come. I give to the people of the Philippines my solemn pledge that their freedom will be redeemed and their independence established and protected. The entire resources, in men and in material, of the United States stand behind that pledge.”

  Frank put his hands on his hips and glanced at Jimmy with a nod of confident hope.

  “It is not for me or for the people of this country to tell you where your duty lies. We are engaged in a great and common cause. I count on every Philippine man, woman, and ...”

  A loud, distinct bird call rang out from a tree, from a lookout whistling loudly, a signal Jimmy well knew meant that Japanese forces were somewhere in the area. As the Filipino boy whistled again even louder, Jack shut off the radio and shoved it into the hut under a mat as everyone fled to their designated hideouts.

  Charma doused the cooking fire with a bucket of sand as Jimmy grabbed a bag of mangoes and headed out behind Frank and Gertrude into the deep foliage. They never knew how long they’d be hiding and had to be prepared for a long wait. Even though they’d been barefoot for nearly their entire stay, they still had to walk gingerly over the rocks and muddy ground through the woods to their cave. Running wasn’t an option without severe consequences.

  In a tree above, the boy looked through binoculars down on a group of twenty-two Japanese soldiers about a mile away in the valley below, hacking through bamboo near a path, stopping and pointing, unfolding a map, and pointing again. />
  Jimmy tripped over a vine but caught himself as the four of them clambered into the small grotto. Charma pulled the vines back over the opening as the others leaned against the cool stone walls and did their best to make as little noise as possible while breathing heavily and listening. Reaching down to his foot, Jimmy plucked a leaf stuck between his toes and noticed a fresh gash on his leg. “I didn’t hear F.D.R. say when they’re coming,” Jimmy whispered, “Did you?”

  Frank forced a grin. “Whenever it is, it won’t be a day too soon. I can tell you that.”

  This was the second time they’d fled to the cave. The location seemed pretty remote to the locals and certainly to Jimmy, but the guerrillas had stirred up a hornet’s nest by their successful attacks and the Japanese weren’t willing to wait for the next one. They were determined to take the fight to the guerrillas, once they’d found their center of operations. Jimmy’s hope was simply that the Americans would take the island before the Japanese found them out. They’d been as close as a half-mile before, but the jungle was so dense it was hard to see a foot path even 10 feet away. Jimmy felt they were as safe as they could be.

  “Wait,” Charma whispered. “Listen.”

  Each froze as they strained to hear. It was the second bird call, the “all clear” sound from the lookout.

  Charma put her hand to her chest and sighed with relief. “This isn’t fun anymore. I just want to go back home, to our home in Yokohama.”

  “You know,” Jimmy said, “it’s possible that we could run into a student we were teaching just a few years ago.” As he parted the draped vines, he looked back at the group and paused. “I wonder if he’d shoot me.”

  Chapter 73

  Early April, 1943. Rabaul Air Base, the Australian Territory of New Guinea.