Wounded Tiger Page 27

  The pattern was the same wherever Watanabe went – random people tied up, beaten, and stabbed with bayonets to extract information. Not getting what they wanted, soldiers selected others, perhaps family members or friends, or children. Some were hung upside down and set on fire to instill terror. Culminating in total frustration, nearly everyone in the area could be executed. In the prior two weeks Watanabe and his men had slaughtered over 2,000 civilians.

  “I’ll teach them not to lie to me! Blindfold him!” Watanabe’s eyes flared with an insane fury.

  Another soldier wrapped a rag for a blindfold around the man’s head as he was pushed to his knees and continued his vain pleadings for mercy.

  The women convulsed in shrieks as Watanabe unsheathed his sword and took his stance, slowly raising his katana above his head, completely deaf to the wailing of the horrified women. The paradise island of Panay had become the island of mud and blood.

  Chapter 85

  Early December, 1943. Nanking, China.

  Alerted by the echo of hammers pounding nails in the courtyard, Jake braced his hands and feet on opposite walls of his wooden cell and, as was his habit, shimmied his way, inch by inch, to the top of his cell where he strained to peer through the slit to investigate. The guards were completing work on some kind of wooden box. To Jake it pretty much looked like a coffin. He braced his arms and legs extra hard as he felt a weakness shoot though his bones. Confused, fearful and angry, he carefully shimmied his way back down.

  He slumped to the floor, letting his head fall into his hands in a daze. If someone wasn’t dead already, he soon would be. Whatever was going on, it was very, very bad.

  The next day, his latch clicked and the wooden cell door creaked open. Jake narrowed his eyes into the light. Two guards and the camp warden stood tall, dressed in new uniforms, something he hadn’t seen before. Jake got to his feet and was escorted toward the cell of Bob Meder. Jake glanced at the guards who wouldn’t look him in the eyes. It was always a bad sign when the guards wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  They stopped near the entrance of Bob’s cell and let Jake walk forward on his own. He took a few tentative steps and leaned to peer into the dark chamber. The room gave off the odd scent of a sawmill, a latrine, and a flower shop. Stepping inside, he looked down on the gaunt, peaceful body of Bob lying in the raw wood coffin, a wreath of white flowers on his chest. It wasn’t a total surprise, as Jake had seen his life slowly ebb away. Still, to see his friend dead was shocking. On the other side of the floor laid the lid of the coffin with a Bible neatly placed in the center.

  Jake studied Bob’s peaceful face. To him, Bob was a true gentleman, a prince of a man. When his plane went down in the water on the coast of China, he nearly drowned trying to save the lives of two of his of crewmates. That was Bob. He could have just looked out for himself, but he wasn’t that kind of a guy. He deserved better than to be treated like a piece of rotting meat by half-human captors for the past year and a half. His death was meaningless.

  As Jake wiped the water from the edge of his eye, a cloud of silent rage descended on him. His head trembled as he breathed more deeply and the vessels in his neck began to pound. One last time, he looked at Bob’s face, leaned down, and whispered through clenched teeth, “I hope every damn Jap is wiped off the face of the earth.”

  He turned toward the door and shuffled out into the hallway, glaring at the guards one at a time who seemed to stare at the horizon, then he looked down at the floor breathing hard, trying to restrain himself from any show of the burning hatred he felt.

  That night, back in his cell with the evening stars providing only the barest hint of dark blue light, Jake sat against the wall under a tattered blanket, nearly hyperventilating and trembling violently – from the biting cold and from the boiling fury that raged in his heart and coursed through his veins. Pure, distilled hatred.

  Tokyo, Japan.

  Emperor Hirohito spun around from his office window. “Dead?! How could you let him die?!”

  The commander remained in a deep bow. “Your Majesty, it couldn’t be helped. We have spoken to the prison leaders in order to see that ...”

  “Don’t dare let another Doolittle prisoner die! We may need them later. We can’t afford to lose another.” The Emperor looked away angrily. “Do whatever you need to do!”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, we will.”

  One week later, Nanking, China.

  Jake proudly puffed on a cigarette as he walked the yard and eyed George, who was seated on a bench opposite the prison warden, who nodded and rapidly took notes.

  George kept blabbing on with his Brooklyn accent. “Bread, butter, jam, steak, eggs, potatoes, milk, ice cream – you got this?”

  “Eggs,” the warden repeated back, “milk - and - ice - cream.”

  “And we need to eat three times a day, not two times. No more of that.”

  “Meals - three - times.”

  “And we’re going crazy in here, too. We need something to read. You know, books, magazines, newspapers. I know you can’t give us newspapers, but how about some books?”

  “Books,” the commander repeated as he wrote.

  “And what about letters? And Red Cross packages?”

  George knew that this short turn of events wouldn’t last, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask for the moon, even if he and the boys only ended up with a few extra scraps.

  “Letters,” the warden said as he scribbled, then flipped his pad closed and slid it into his pocket. “We will look into these things and let you know what we can do. We will do everything we can to take care of you properly.”

  As the warden stood and walked away, Jake shook his head in disbelief and exhaled a cloud of smoke in front of his face. George looked back at Jake and shrugged. It was worth a shot.

  Jake sat hunched on the floor of his cell under his blanket, devouring a dog-eared copy of a well-worn book. There were no steak and eggs, or letters, or ice cream, but the four surviving raiders did start to get some bread, and for the first time received three meals a day instead of two. A few old books were scrounged from who knows where and were circulated among the men.

  Stamped on the cover of the burgundy volume Jake was reading were the words: The Pleasures of Hope, by Thomas Campbell – an epic poem first published in 1799. For the first time in many months, Jake drifted away to a better place:

  Primeval Hope, the Aonian24 Muses say,

  When Man and Nature mourned their first decay;

  When every form of death, and every woe,

  Shot from malignant stars to earth below;

  When Murder bared her arm, and rampant War

  Yoked the red dragons of her iron car;

  When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain,

  Sprung on the viewless winds to Heaven against,

  All, all forsook the friendless, guilty mind,

  But Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind.

  Hope. It was the one thing that kept Jake hanging on.

  Chapter 86

  December 10, 1943. Hopevale. The Philippines.

  Charma handed Jimmy another section of woven mat to repair an outside window shade. “Yeah, that fits pretty good.” Jimmy tied the mat in with a strand of lacing, blinking hard as the sweat dripped from the brim of his hat into his eyes. As he reached up, he noticed how thin his arms had gotten and realized how pronounced the veins and sinews were. He was aging quickly.

  “Mr. Covell?”

  Jimmy and Charma turned to three Filipina ladies standing behind them holding a handmade banner of woven palm strands.

  “For your home. For Christmas.”

  The ladies stepped apart and hung out the full dangling banner with the woven words: “PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TO ALL MEN.”

  Jimmy looked at Charma with a beaming smile, then to the ladies. “Why that’s outstanding!” He reached out and examined the brilliant handiwork of the ladies who blushed with pride. “How did you do that?”

  �
�It’s beautiful,” Charma said.

  “A gift, for all you’ve given to us,” a woman said with a smile.

  He looked into the ladies’ faces with sincerity. “Thank you. Thank you! Here, let’s put it up.”

  He led the ladies to the front of their stilted hut and motioned to a place on their porch railing. “What do you say? I think it’d be perfect right here.”

  The rain showers that evening fell steadily for hours, cascading off the grass roof of the Covell home and joining a soothing hiss of a million pats on the jungle leaves. A single kerosene lamp painted the room in gold as Jimmy held Charma in his arms in a slow dance to White Christmas, crackling in on their radio, Charma’s new favorite song by Bing Crosby. Maybe they didn’t have much, Jimmy thought, but they had each other, and he loved his wife. They continued their dance while trying to avoid the random leaks dripping through the roof. Charma looked Jimmy in the face for a moment, smiled, put her head back on his shoulder – and wept.

  December 14, 1943. Twenty eight miles north of Hopevale.

  Two hundred sixty Japanese soldiers and one hundred fifteen local Filipinos forced into the search by the army spread across a clearing in the mountains. Behind them, clouds of smoke churned into the sky from a torched village. With his hands on his hips, Captain Watanabe squinted and scanned the hilly horizon from one end to the other. He uncapped his canteen and turned to his translator. “Ask him if we go this way to the American camp.”

  A soldier swung the bayonet of his rifle toward an American slung between two Filipinos, placed the blade under his bearded chin caked in dried blood, and lifted his head. The translator leaned toward the American.

  The man was Lieutenant Albert King. Wounded and separated from his men, he was captured near a tributary of the Aklan River, a river that started high in the mountains and opened to the sea on the north side of the island. He was only half-conscious. All of his toenails and fingernails had been torn out.

  Despite the fact that General MacArthur had sent communications to the guerrillas in the Philippines to cease attacks and to lay low for the time being to prevent reprisals by the Japanese, and that the guerrillas had complied, the Japanese command had issued a special order to seek and kill all Americans on the island. The past random hit and run tactics of the guerrillas had been highly effective and maddeningly frustrating to the Japanese. Now, Watanabe could smell his hunted prey.

  “We head south which way?” the translator said in English. “More to the mountains, or toward the southeast?”

  Shigeru, the officer who had actually been to Hopevale and passed out currency, looked at the translator, then at the American, hoping he was too confused to know the way.

  King blinked slowly and swallowed. His eyes turned toward the lush, jade ridges of the south and he raised his head a bit in that direction.

  Watanabe stood erect, glanced back at his men, and waved them toward the southeast.

  December 19, Hopevale.

  The warm, damp night air brought its own earthy scent and the familiar chorus of insects. The congregation of nearly eighty people sat quietly in the outdoor sanctuary under the glow of wicker lanterns scattered around the outside and down the center aisle of the open church hidden beneath the luan trees that vaulted into a cathedral ceiling.

  The stone seats all taken for this yuletide event, many stood along the sides, local Filipino husbands with their wives and children, working men, farmers, and guerrilla fighters, who had left their guns beside a tree out of respect. Jack stood with folded arms toward the back.

  Christmas being only a few days away, the community had decided to have one service in Hopevale that evening. There was never a sense of ownership or sectarianism among the people. It never crossed their minds.

  “This Christmas, it would be fitting to read from the prophet Isaiah,” Jimmy said as he stood at the front. A small, stone altar displaying three candles beside him brought out the creases in his worn face. “‘The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. For you shall break the yoke of their burden and the rod of their oppressors, for every boot of the warrior in the battle, and the coat covered in blood will be for burning, fuel for the fire. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders; And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, the Prince ...’”

  Jimmy looked up. “And this Prince won’t be the kind who brings war or bloodshed, death or destruction.”

  He held the book up before him and continued reading, “He will be called ... the ‘Prince of Peace. And there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace from then on and forevermore.’” He nodded with a smile. “Amen.”

  The next day.

  High in the branches of a tropical tree, a Filipino teenager fixed his gaze through his binoculars in the afternoon heat. His friend below looked up anxiously, pacing and rubbing his hands. The lookout jerked the binoculars down, swung them over his shoulder, put his fingers to his mouth and gave the familiar whistle of warning to all that Japanese troops were nearby – three times. He shimmied down toward his friend at the base of the tree. “They’re coming from the north!” he said in Ilonggo as he struggled and leapt to the ground in a thud. “They’re spreading out on both sides. Hundreds!”

  The other boy nodded and the two of them sprinted in opposite directions into the underbrush.

  Jack raced through the camp holding his submachine gun tightly over his shoulder. He pounded his hand along the outside of Jimmy’s hut as he ran. “Go, go, go! We gotta get outa here! Now!”

  Other guerrillas and the lookout called out as people sprinted and stumbled in various directions. Even the monkeys fled from the trees above.

  Jimmy limped to the doorway. “Yeah, OK. We’re coming. Charma, let’s go!”

  Jack looked at their weathered faces and torn clothes with a sense of foreboding. “Get in your cave. You’ll be safe there. Go!”

  Frank and his wife trotted up, panting. “Ready?”

  Jimmy and Charma stepped down from their hut and began their practiced routine, again heading into the woods barefooted, pushing the foliage aside as they ran, yet with far less energy than in the past. Jimmy could hear the soldiers calling to each other in Japanese and could make out words here and there.

  As Jimmy pushed through the leaves, he remembered that a few weeks earlier Reverend Dianala encouraged him and the others at Hopevale to split up, to seek higher ground and to head deeper into the woods as he felt it was becoming less safe in the area, but Jimmy knew he was simply getting too weak. Frank Rose was nearly sixty and there were children in the camp as well. As he ran through huge ferns brushing across his face he wondered if they should have tried to move.

  Charma tripped over a vine and fell to her knees. Jimmy reached back, took her muddy hand and pulled her up, and they started again.

  “Mah-TAY!”25 From a distance behind them, a soldier shouted again, “Tomaranto utsuzo!”26 A single round cracked from a rifle, echoing into the jungle canopy sending birds in flight. Five more soldiers joined him with their rifles pointing down the path.

  Violently gasping for breath, Jimmy, Charma, Frank and Gertrude stood with their sweat soaked backs to the soldiers and slowly turned. They could run no more.

  Chapter 87

  Early February, 1944. Saipan.

  “In a few months,” Nagumo said to Fuchida, “they’re going to put me in charge of the Middle Pacific Fleet and the Fourteenth Air Fleet. But with only anti-submarine craft and a few combat planes, my forces are completely inadequate to protect Saipan and the Marianas.”

  Inside headquarters on the island, Fuchida stood beside his old commander, Vice Admiral Nagumo, as they both looked out the window watching two Japanese fighters roar off the end of a dirt runway, lifting up over a tropical green cliff, then lofting above a turquoise sea.

  Fuchida felt the concern on
Nagumo’s face.

  “I’ve been promised troop transfers from Manchukuo, but they won’t be under my command.” Nagumo turned to Fuchida with penetrating eyes. “I need the First Air Fleet under my own command, but they won’t give it to me. How can I possibly defend all these islands without it?”

  Nagumo was right, Fuchida thought. He was being given an impossible task and he knew it. Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, had become the center of a defensive line against the steady American advances – the last line of defense. If Saipan fell, the Japanese supply lines would be cut off and the homeland would be within range of a new breed of long range American bombers they’d been hearing rumors about, and fearing.

  Fuchida wanted nothing more than to put Nagumo’s fears at rest. As Senior Staff Officer of the First Air Fleet, he knew exactly what their resources were, where they were, and most importantly at this moment, where they were heading next. “Sir, the First Air Fleet can move to any location they’re needed as a single unit,” he said.

  “But it can only be at one place at a time. What if it’s needed somewhere else when I need it here? Then what?” Nagumo glanced uncomfortably at Fuchida, then back to the beach where sun-darkened, bare-chested soldiers poured cement for a nearly complete gun emplacement. The low, rounded structure with horizontal slits for machine guns was one of many defenses rising around the edges of the tiny island.

  “Sir, if you will permit me.” Fuchida stepped to an oversized wall map and began sliding his finger from island to island in the Philippines, then to the Mariana chain. “I expect approval of fifteen more bases in the Philippines and I have orders to establish at least ten air bases to accommodate hundreds more aircraft here, here, here and here. With your cooperation in completing the airstrips, we can fully support you.” He had little confidence all would take place as planned, but desperately wanted to assuage his former commander’s deepest fears.