Baa Baa Black Sheep (42 page)

This meant she and I would have tea together, and in addition she would fix up a few Japanese pickles. She would get us a tiny amount of sugar, too, which was kept on hand only for those high-up naval officers who frequently visited the camp to quiz us. And she would steal a little bit of this sugar for our tea.

And it was during the winter months that I worked in the kitchen, from September to April, and it was cold, bitterly so. Yet these ovens are kind of Dutch-oven affairs, with big rice pots in them, and we would open up the oven doors. Of course, during the midmorning and midafternoon periods nothing was cooking in the ovens. The big pots merely were inside of them. So we would put a little stool in front of each oven and she would start to talk.

Only with her did I dare speak Japanese, for I never did around the guards, because we could get our war information better from them by pretending we knew nothing about their language. She was too old, or would forget, when talking to the guards about me, that I spoke practically perfect Japanese to her and understood it.

We would have this sweet tea and she would break out a little old pipe with some of this hair tobacco we had. The bowl of the pipe was about the size of the end of my little finger, and I would reach in my pocket and pull out a can and sort around for my selection of tobacco from it. My own selection of tobacco consisted of what the Japanese threw down in front of the guard stove. The tobacco consisted of snipes. But they were sanitary because I had made a cigarette holder from a piece of bamboo. I would adjust one of these snipes in the end of my bamboo holder, much like Freddie the Free-loader, and take a sliver of bamboo and reach it through the open doors that were warming us, getting a light for Obason and myself.

So we would sit there, Obason smoking her tiny pipe
and I smoking my snipe, and sipping this sweet tea. And as we sat there talking and smoking, Obason would tell me, oh, how bad that war was, and how she longed for the day when it would be over.

She would say: “You can’t buy any candy, you can’t get any cloth to make clothes out of.” For all of these people were in rags, officers and everybody. There was hardly a person I saw in all Japan who was not dressed in rags.

On the first day, for instance, when any American was captured in the combat zone, and if these officers were without shoes, they took them. I cannot say that I blame them for that. If I didn’t have a pair of shoes and captured some poor jerk, I would take his shoes too. We cannot blame each other for such things.

Anyhow, Obason said she longed for the days when the automobiles were going up and down the streets. For months before the war there was nothing but a few of those coke-burning trucks that have to be pushed up every hill, and they all carried a crew of about ten men, and every time they would come to a slight hill, they would have to shove the truck up the hill. They would go all right on the level provided they had practically no load.

Then she would ask me: “How is everything in Baykoko?”—Baykoko meaning the United States.

I was, of course, just like every other G.I. whether in England, France, Italy, Burma, or anyplace else. I liked to brag, so I said: “Oh gee, Obason, it’s great. We have all the tires in the world, all the gas, everyone has an automobile he can just ride everywhere he wants, everybody has a big ranch.”

I would kind of kid her because she seemed to enjoy the tales so much, so I said: “Well, how do you like that as far as you’ve heard? You come back and take care of my kids for me, as I don’t have a wife.”

Old Obason would giggle and answer: “Oh, I’m afraid you might change your mind and shove me off the boat on the way back.” Wherewith she clasped her hands, dipped her knees quickly, and giggled—as she always did with a joke.

And this is the way we would talk over our tea and tobacco during the lulls when the guards were not around.

On several occasions two or three of Obason’s daughters came around. One of them had a child strapped to her back.
Her appearance was almost angelic, her actions the same. One could not believe that she was what we thought of as “Nips” or “Japs”—especially with the guards we knew in camp.

When nobody was around this daughter would say the one or two expressions she knew in English. They were “I love you,” or something like that. Then she too would giggle. Of course, she didn’t mean it that way, but she had heard it from motion pictures they had shown in Japan. And the baby with her, a little kid with bangs, had the appearance of an ivory doll. The complexions of the women and children are, I think, the nicest complexions in the world, nothing like our American women. The skins were as smooth as if they had just been covered with cream.

But one day I did an awful thing to Obason, and without meaning to.

The prison camp was to be visited again by some of those naval intelligence officers who came out to ply us with questions, with their $64 questions. My, how time progresses, for we now have a $64,000 question.

In preparing the meal in advance for these higher-ups Obason wanted everything just so. Her pride and joy was some China dishes, and on these dishes she carefully arranged pickles and everything, including the fish.

But the more I kept thinking of these higher-ups, and all their questions that once again might be thrown at me, the less I must have remembered Obason. These intelligence bastards would be out here in a little while trying to pump military information out of us, and so, feeling mad about it, I deliberately selected this moment to clean out the stoves, allowing the grit to go all over their food on those pretty dishes.

The old lady screamed:
“Boyingtonson, Boyingtonson. Yamai, yamai!”
Which roughly means “Stop, stop!” And she screamed: “You’re getting
toxon gomai!
” which roughly means “much dirt.”

So I stopped, but it does show how, just as in all wars, the innocent must suffer just because somebody (in this case me) had a mad on.

She forgave me, but I haven’t quite forgiven myself. So when I first got back to the United States and heard that some of my Black Sheep pilots were going out to Japan, I
gave them Obason’s address. At least, I gave the best address I knew and told them to be sure and give her some money and some candy.

Yet the most I could do—even now—would be but the smallest of tokens for her kindnesses to me.

In fact, while sitting here in the den awaiting supper, I cannot help imagine how it would be if the old lady, through some miracle, should suddenly arrive, as if out of the skies, for one of our old “teas” again. We would sit and talk and discuss and smoke. Only in my case it would not be snipes any more. And then, just when we were about to eat, she quickly would say:
“Boyingtonson, Boyingtonson, Haitison,”
which means “Look out, Boyington, the guards.” Wherewith, at her joke, she would clasp her hands just as she used to do, dip her knees, and giggle.

And you can bet your hat and ass that there were many occasions when I sincerely wished I could be back sitting beside Obason in the cold in front of those Dutch ovens. Those too many times that I was pulling myself off a terrific drunk with a terrible hangover. The time that the Bureau of Internal Revenue placed liens upon all my earthly possessions until I paid the tax and interest they claimed I owed them, for the period of time I was overseas and an undeclared prisoner of war, on my service salary, which I unfortunately never received. I found that my drinking troubles amused the world on the front pages of newspapers and in magazines. Anything for a laugh, I thought, as I read my name connected with the disgrace and drinking of people I hadn’t seen in years.

As the years go on, we are going to learn more and more from the Japanese, the same as they are going to learn from us—and want to learn from us. With the bars of hate and suspicion no longer existing we can regard ourselves not as
nations but as people. As visitors to Japan in the future we will not be there as spies, as was thought before. All that has been cleansed away, washed off the boards, although it did take a terrible war to do it. But as visitors of the future in Japan I do hope we can show as much sportsmanship in our victory as the Japanese are in their defeat.

In our guards I was seeing the worst Japanese at their worst, and they in turn were seeing us American captives at our lowest ebb. But even so, there was some little redeeming feature, some little laugh somewhere along with the pain, or some little new thing to be learned.

As I go through my experiences with the Japanese, I am not trying to build them up or run them down. All I am trying to do is to get across what I saw and what I know. And if some of these observations do appear to be that way, the reason is that the Japanese themselves were often contradictory—the same as we ourselves are often. We are not machines. People are not machines. But I have seen even machines be contradictory, too.

There was many a college professor, as well as American-educated Japanese, who had been inducted into the movement of Asia for the Asians, with the industrialized nation of Japan on top, of course. Many of this type individual were employed with a reserve military status as interpreter. And I believed the majority of them when they said they didn’t have a thing to say about the matter. And were in a boat similar to ours. The Japs didn’t trust them, either.

I also believed one who was educated in Chicago, and knew that he was sincere when he instructed some Chicago boys to contact certain professors in Chicago if he didn’t happen to turn up after the war was over. Thank God for all these interpreters and their kindnesses.

Personally, I spent money with a lawyer here in the United States trying to help many of these people after the war. It appeared that almost all military-connected Japanese were thrown into one mass prosecuting bucket. They were tried jointly, to save time, with others who didn’t belong to the same world.

One of these fellows, Jimmy, a Southern California graduate we called “Handsome Harry,” did a great deal to help prisoners, especially the Americans. Many of us ex-prisoners tried to help him by writing depositions through our own
lawyers to be used in his trial, but they were disregarded completely in Jimmy’s case—he is still in prison in Japan.

While talking with a former American military prosecutor on the golf course here at Burbank recently, I endeavored to find the reason for their utter disregard for statements. This fifty-year-old, self-styled playboy nauseated me, for he told about not having time to go over evidence because the prosecutors were busy with the geisha house they had built to entertain themselves while the trials were going on. He spent most of his time telling me about all the fun I missed, but added: “We went under the assumption that anybody who was educated in the United States deserved anything we could pin on him.”

Anyhow, “Handsome Harry,” as Jimmy was called by those who didn’t know his real name, and I had many a delightful conversation during those brief intervals when we were certain we were alone. In fact, Jimmy told me right off the bat, at an intermission in my first interrogation at Ofuna: “I know you are lying like hell, Boyington, but stick to it, as it sounds like a good story. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell anyone I told you so.”

“Okay, don’t worry, I won’t, and thanks.” I thanked him even though, at first, I was certain that it was a trick of some kind. It didn’t turn out to be one at all, but I might mention that I didn’t trust very many people then, as one might have gathered by now. Jimmy said much the same to others in Ofuna, but for fear of his own safety he wasn’t going about making such statements at random. His family was over there too, so he was more or less forced to use some discretion.

During one of our discussions when no regular officers had accompanied him to the camp we sat by ourselves, the two of us smoking and sipping tea in one of the interrogating rooms. Our conversations were different from what one might imagine—because we were laughing and joking. Jimmy once said: “Greg, I hope you don’t hate the Japanese people after the war is over.”

“If I don’t, please believe me, it won’t be because some of your goons aren’t trying hard enough.”

“Yes, I realize that, and I am sorry about it.”

“But fantastic as it may sound, the Japs have made a habit of saving my life, almost since I can remember. When I was six years old a Jap farmer boy snatched me from the
spring flood waters of the St. Joe River in Idaho. Well, the other times you know about.”

“This does seem to be more than a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

“In addition to all this you people, unbeknown to yourselves, have been the only ones to put me on the water wagon and make it stick. Friends, relatives, and commanding officers have tried it before without much success. I have even tried to do it myself, sincerely, but always fell off before the time was up.”

Jimmy appeared astonished and said: “You certainly don’t look like you ever had any trouble that way.”

“No, truthfully, I would like to think I owed a debt of gratitude to the Japanese for shooting me down and capturing me. For I was slowly killing myself, I know. But let’s talk about something interesting, for a change.”

“Like what?”

“Like sex, for instance. How do you think the Americans and Japanese are going to make out when they intermarry after the war’s over?”

He leaned back on the legs of his chair, placing his feet in anything but true Japanese fashion on top of the table between us, thought awhile, then started talking:

“I believe Japanese women would make wonderful mates for the American men, but I don’t think that the American women could stand the Japanese men.”

“Why do you think that way?” And what he told me made sense, and is just exactly the way it turned out after the war.

Jimmy said: “The Japanese woman is very affectionate, and is devoted to her husband. Yet she remains in the background, and doesn’t try to run everything. But our men, I know, would never be able to keep up with the American women.”

I knew he was serious and had put some thought into his statements, but I couldn’t resist hamming things up a bit, so I laughed and said: “I don’t know about your women, because I haven’t been given the opportunity, but I think I know what you mean about the men not being able to satisfy American women.”