Baa Baa Black Sheep (43 page)

“How’s that?”

“Well, these guards stand around open-eyed while we
are taking our bath. They point at us and say: ‘
Toxon, toxon
,’ so I would rather gather from this the girls back home really don’t know how lucky they are.”

Jimmy coughed, choking on cigarette smoke, and had to drop his feet from the table to catch his breath; afterward both of us laughed together.

Also, whether it seems contradictory to my previous reference to the cold, I want to tell about being able to take a hot Japanese bath each night after I finished my chores. This was after I had been transferred to kitchen duty, and when my hours of work were finished after nine at night, I was permitted this luxury. During the cold winter months these baths were really a Godsend. Part of the reason I was allowed to take them could have been that the officers wanted their kitchen help clean.

We had watched how the Japanese took their baths, how they soaped down, sponged off in hot water, and then sat for twenty minutes or so in a tremendous tub of practically boiling-hot water. When we were first allowed to try it, we could not stay in more than a second, but gradually I got so I could take it just as hot as any Japanese. We captives who worked for the Japanese got into the tub after the Japanese were through, a large cement tub that a half-dozen people could immerse their entire bodies in at one time. If anybody had told me prior to my capture that I would relish sitting in a tub of water that the Japanese had been soaking in, I would have thought he was off his bat, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We captives who were permitted to take this bath at night got so heated up in the bath that when we walked to our cells to go to sleep, even when there was ice and snow on the ground, we could walk right on it barefoot and not feel it. In fact, one’s body could become so heated up that if he wrapped himself up in his blankets the heat would not seem to go out of his body until the following morning. One would sleep warm all night long.

Each morning at four-thirty, while I was working in the kitchen, one of the guards awakened two prisoner helpers who had to start the fires and get everything going for the prisoners’ food and the guards’ rice. Naturally one is not very cheerful being awakened at four-thirty in the morning, before dawn. Every time, they gave us the little old pidgin-English expression.
“Speedo, speedo,”
which means, “hurry up, hurry
up.” Sometimes they added a few of their swear words to insult us a bit. The worst thing a Japanese can say to you is
“baka,”
or
“kanero,”
which means “you fool” or “foolish one.” Many times a guard came in the kitchen and asked me to do something, adding
“Baka
.” The tone of his voice as well as what he said would make me resent it, and I would say calmly: “Baka yourself, you son of a bitch!”

“Nunda?”
he would ask.

“Nothing. How correct you are. How correct you are,” and he would feel satisfied. Sometimes I would smile and bow and say very politely: “To your honor, you son of a bitch,” then he would smile and nod back, just like we were old buddies.

I recall a rather nice young coolie-type guard I had a conversation with one morning, even though he didn’t know a word of English. I kind of picked my guard. I was busy trying to get the fires started. I didn’t get them going in the first three seconds, and he gave me this
“speedo, speedo”
business, which I rather imagined he thought was part of his duty. I ceased my activities on this particular occasion, turned around, pointed my finger and touched his shiny belt, and told him in his language: “You’re a very good guard, do excellent guard duty.”

He nodded and smiled at me, taking it as a compliment, and I continued: “You don’t allow any unlawfulness or disobedience among the prisoners or anything. I compliment you on being a good guard.”

He bowed to me again. Then I explained to him that I was in this kitchen to be a fire builder and take care of all the heavy duties around the kitchen. I explained to him that I was a very good fire builder. Then I said: “You tend to your guard duty and I’ll tend to building the fires. As far as I’m concerned, everything that goes on every morning, this
’speedo, speedo’
business, whether the fire starts off in one minute or ten minutes, is making me tired. As a matter of fact, it gives me very much pain”—and I pointed to my tail—“very much pain right here.”

This guard looked at me a few seconds. There must be no expression in their language that says “pain in the ass,” because all of a sudden he started to laugh. It was about four-thirty in the morning and he ran, still laughing, into the guardhouse. I think he must have awakened every guard in
the place and told them how I said
“speedo, speedo”
business gave me a big pain in the ass. Why it struck him as so funny I still don’t know, but it was obvious that we had funny ways to them, and they slayed us with some of their idiosyncrasies.

The guards’ cook in Ofuna was a civilian, Hata. He was the only male I knew, outside of the interpreters, who wore his hair long. The military and us prisoners had their hair cropped off close. “Curley” was the name he was called by the prisoners. He was only about four and a half feet tall, a rather handsome face, and he took pride in keeping a wavy head of black hair well groomed. He had one of the most perfectly muscled bodies I ever saw on a man—a miniature Charles Atlas. He was forever looking up English words in a Japanese-English dictionary. He would ask George Whiting, an American submarine lieutenant who worked in the kitchen with me for a time, how to use these English words he would look up. Then he would proceed literally to wear out each word in broken English sentences for days.

One day George and I were lifting one of the hot, heavy cast-iron vats from the Dutch ovens to repair the firebox. In doing so we accidentally slopped a great deal of soup on the cement floor of the kitchen, making quite a mess. Hata was furious with us because it was just about time for lunch. He figured we were about the clumsiest pair in captivity, judging from his Nip mumbling. Then he quieted down and said in English: “In your language, I imagine what you call this is ‘masterpiece,’ ” George and I laughed so hard it was a wonder we didn’t spill what remained in the heavy vat. Hata’s expression stuck with me, and I had many an occasion to use it after the war, especially upon myself. For every time I came off one of my periodic drunks I chastized myself silently, sometimes out loud, and during these many times I invariably said: “Masterpiece, Boyington, masterpiece.”

By Christmas I considered myself most fortunate. My wounds had finally healed. I was getting plenty of food for a change. My ankle was misshapen but I walked with only a slight limp. I was looking forward to this being my first sober Christmas, where neither I nor anybody around me had any liquor.

Junior, whom I mentioned earlier as the only prisoner I knew prior to my capture, and I were counting our blessings that Christmas. There was never a more thankful gang than
the prisoners of Ofuna on Christmas of 1944. And we had nothing in comparison to now.

Junior Condant and his Navy TBF crew had been shot down on a raid over Marcus Island. I was to see and hear more about him after the war, and I was very happy with the company of a loyal and true friend at this time.

Whenever I see the movie
Fighting Lady
, I am also reminded of Junior, for it shows him and his plane taking off the carrier, and says:…“never to return again.” The two of us had many things in common.

In recent years I have learned about a Commander Jim Condant from a Marine classmate of mine, long after I was through with the USMC. It seems there was a group of experimental test pilots from the various services gathered around a research table at a testing base in Maryland. My classmate said: “I had no idea that any of the officers at that critique had ever met you, Greg. Anyway, your name came up during the business at hand—I forget just how—and an officer I am sure had never even met you before said: ‘Why, that no-good so-and-so. He did this and he did that.’ As soon as he said this I realized there was somebody who knew you, besides myself, when Jim Condant said: “I am positive you have never met Boyington, but I have. I spent two years in a prison camp with him. And I’m giving you just five seconds to apologize.’

“The officer said: ‘I’ll be damned if I will.’

“And believe me, Greg, the armed forces experimental critique was ended, because Condant waited just five seconds, then sailed across the top of the table and grabbed this guy by the throat, tipping his chair over backward and carrying him to the deck. As he was sitting on this guy’s chest he was screaming: ‘I’m going to beat your head on the deck till you apologize.’ The rest of us had to pull him off, or he would have killed the guy.”

Maybe this sounds egotistical. But the reason I mention it is that I don’t have to bother any longer about who likes me and who doesn’t. As long as I can face the gent in the mirror in the morning, I won’t ever have to worry about my share of friends.

This classmate of mine never told me what the officer had said in a derogatory manner. But if he called me a drunken bum, God bless Jim Condant. I’m afraid his efforts
were for naught, because this is something I admit to quite honestly.

During my one and only Christmas at Ofuna, we prisoners asked the guards for permission to sing carols. The guards said okay, as they too enjoyed singing, even though they couldn’t understand the words. And they knew good voices from mediocre or bad.

If I were only capable of writing an opera, this prison camp would be the greatest setting I know of. There were a few fellows with great voices. Frank Tinker, who had an obviously well-trained voice, and Brian Stacy, the Australian pilot, who had an untrained voice, were called upon to do most of the singing for the camp. Both of these fellows possessed a remarkable delivery.

We had started something the Japanese wouldn’t let us stop. They would have either Tinker or Stacy, time after time, go out into the center of the courtyard to sing for them. Sometimes in the dark of the night. I couldn’t help feel the utmost pity for these two fellows with their beautiful voices, as I watched them through the window of my cell while they were out in the courtyard singing. At times eddies of snow-flakes would obliterate the lone singer from my vision, then he would seem to return mistily back again, and the sound would be loud or soft as the snow commanded. The buildings on two sides and steep hills on the other two sides formed a theater in which the acoustics were perfection itself.

As we sang through the days from Christmas to the New Year, I suddenly realized that in two more days I would complete a year without a single drink, my first year without liquor since I had started drinking. I don’t know why I felt so proud of myself, but I did. I really had no reason to be, just because I happened to be someplace I couldn’t help myself. I thought: “At last, I am finally going to last out a year without taking a drink.”

New Year’s Eve and the following day are quite some occasion in the lives of the Japanese, I was to find. All of their birthdays are believed to have some connection with the coming of the New Year. This was the all-important occasion, I gathered, while Christmas to them meant nothing other than our singing carols.

Curly and Obason labored all day in the kitchen, getting things prepared for a New Year’s feast of some kind. They
cooked all natures of Japanese delicacies and stored them away in the kitchen cupboards for what ever they would be doing that night and the following day. Curly and Obason would have tomorrow off with their families.

The chief petty officer in charge of the camp asked me if I would remain and tend fires in the kitchen until after midnight. The Japanese called him “Gocha,” but we prisoners referred to him as the head goat. The goat was a rather plump individual, and not too bad a fellow, I thought. Anyhow, I informed the goat that I would be only too happy to help him out, because I had the stealing of some of those choice foods in the back of my mind.

The big doings were to take place in the guards’ quarters. I couldn’t see what was going on but had no desire to find out how things turned out. I remained alone most of the night in the semi-dark, blacked-out kitchen, huddled beside the guards’ stove, smoking quietly by myself until about ten-thirty that evening.

Then the goat entered the kitchen with a case of bottles filled with some colorless liquid, and said in Japanese: “Boyington, will you keep a pot of hot water going on the stove?”

I asked: “Nunda?”

He said: “This is sake, and we have to warm it up for the New Year party. Understand sake, Boyington?”

“Yes, I understand sake,” I replied. I knew sake was their drink, much the same as bourbon was an American drink. But this was no concern of mine because all that was required from me was the heating; the Japanese would do all the drinking. I didn’t have the slightest desire for a drink: my mind was thinking about food and just how I was going to get it.

It came like a bolt from the blue when one of the guards entered the kitchen to pick up something for their party and asked: “Boyington, do you like sake?”

I lied: “Yes, I used to before I was captured. Why?”

“Then get your cup quickly, before anyone comes, and I’ll give you a little.”

Without giving the matter a second thought, or this guard an opportunity to change his mind, I started to go for my teacup. While standing there in the darkness, as I was about to pick up my cup, I could only think of how small a
cup was. Then I momentarily thought of a rice bowl, which was considerably larger, but I ended up with a soup bowl, which was still larger.

When I came over into the light with the soup bowl where the slightly inebriated guard was waiting to pour, his eyes seemed to pop out as he exclaimed:
“Toxon, toxon!”

“I can’t find my cup, this will have to do,” I lied again. Without the slightest intention of saying: “When” before he stopped pouring, I watched him. If it had been left up to me, I wouldn’t have spoken until I saw that he was starting to overrun the bowl and waste some, but when the bowl was over half full he stopped, and as he left the kitchen, he cautioned: “Don’t tell anybody I gave you sake.”