Baa Baa Black Sheep (47 page)

This non-com would wear himself down with his antics, then sober up slightly from the physical exertion. He would disappear for a while, returning to the guards’ quarters for more drink and confidence from his fellow-drunks. Several of these door-breaking attempts were so serious, in my estimation, that I stood to one side in back of our doorway, clutching the handle of the hammer our guard had given us. I fully intended to make the first swing upon this drunken non-com’s head, regardless of any consequences, had he accidentally or otherwise bolted through the nailed-up door. Thank God he didn’t!

Our guard at the door talked to us in his free moments, informing us that several of the guards had vowed among themselves to commit hari-kiri before the night was over. He mentioned one whom all of us prisoners liked, an exceptionally large Japanese, and said that this fellow was then in the midst of his hari-kiri ceremony.

During the previous twenty months of my captivity I had listened to so many tales about hari-kiri and Kamikaze that I thought these were coming out of my ears. Bunk, I thought. Somebody would be capable of wanting to take as many of his enemies along with him as he could, but this junk, never.

No, I was wrong, the guard insisted, it was a tradition in Japan.

Then I thought of all the head-on runs I had made with Japanese fighter pilots in the past. In all cases I had had a more durable aircraft, and greater fire-power than these Japanese had. About the only method they could have used to beat me was to have flown head-on into my plane, killing us both. Yet, these pilots had chosen to give ground.

My point was verified the following morning, as we hadn’t lost a single Japanese. The big fellow had only been able to cut his belly sufficiently deep, during his lengthy ceremony, so that the wound could be covered by a Bandaid. Another had cut one wrist slightly.

Not that these Japanese weren’t suffering, because they most certainly were, something horrible, for this happened to be the largest number of hangovers in one place of one nationality that I ever witnessed in my life.

The following day it really dawned on us that something must be over, because the Japanese commanding officer, who never had given us even a nod of kindness, came through our barracks and wanted to know, through the interpreter, how the living conditions were and so forth. The old son of a bitch must have been awfully stupid, I thought, not to think we could understand all we wanted to without the aid of an interpreter.

The next thing we knew, we were all being issued new clothing, the only decent clothing we ever were given. Then the Japanese medical officer started sending in vitamin pills. It said on the bottles: “Take so many of these; take so many of these!” Each time more vitamin pills would come in. We had cod-liver-oil pills, multivitamin pills, and iron pills. Well, we
tried to follow the directions and after about three days I was belching iron ore, cod-liver oil, and everything else. I had to quit.

After five days we were notified that we could go talk to the regular prisoners of war. This was a great day, one we had been looking forward to for a long, long time.

When we were finally released, I experienced something of which I had had a premonition a year and a half before. One day I was walking on my crutches out to the latrine, and on the way back I had stopped to talk to a couple of the boys. I had said to them: “Gee, I had the wildest dream last night.”

“Yeah, what was it?”

“Well, I dreamed that I was in a building something like a schoolhouse, a very modern building, and I was reading a Japanese newspaper and I could read it just as plain as day. It was in the early fall and this newspaper said that the war was over.”

Then I had continued limping down to my cell. The boys—I could see them as I looked over my shoulder—were all shaking their heads because, as I was sick with this infected leg, I guess they thought: “Well, what do you know, old Gramps has finally flipped his wicket.”

Now, here it was fall, a year and a half later, and I did read in a Japanese newspaper (I had no idea a year and a half previously that they printed one in English), in the
Nippon Times
, that the war was over!

The dream, or the premonition, had come true.

On the sixth day after the war they moved us to different quarters. According to my rank, I was now placed in a room with a Navy officer, a submarine commander, and then we had our first visit by the Red Cross, the Swiss.

There were a couple of ladies in the crowd and they, no doubt, had been there through the whole war and had known of our existence but apparently they could not get permission to visit us. Now they were coming by, smiling at each prisoner and wanting to know how he had been mistreated and this, that, and the other thing. They actually sickened me with their talk. The way I felt, there were many things they could have done for us. They could have smuggled out our names, even though we were special prisoners.

I think it is just as right for anybody with the Red Cross on his arm, whether Swiss or not, to fight for what that Red Cross represents as it is for a poor boy in khaki uniform to fight for what his cause is supposed to be. So I had nothing to say to these people.

On this subject, months later when I was in Washington to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, in this line-up to receive the same honor was a young fellow who bore the Red Cross. He was a hospital corpsman, and as he stepped by I really got a big lump right in my throat. This man had one eye shot out as well as many other injuries. He had been a conscientious objector (before the war), but he had earned his medal by proving what he thought was right. He had received his injuries while picking up Marines on the fire-swept hills on Iwo Jima.
*
He had then, in his own way, really fought for what he believed.

About ten days after the war, or the cessation of hostilities, I should say, our own planes, Navy and Air Corps, came over these camps and started dropping clothes and foodstuffs. The prisoners went wild. They were running all over the place, and when the B-29s started dropping fifty-gallon drums packed solid with concentrated foods by parachute, I took to an air-raid shelter.

One prisoner said: “Why don’t you stay out here and get some of this stuff? You can watch these things come down and they wont hit you.”

“Nuts to that,” I answered. “After living through all I have, I’m damned if I’m going to be killed by being hit on the head by a crate of peaches.”

There actually were three or four lives lost among the prisoners after the war was over by parcels dropped from our own planes.

Then, a few days later, some of the boys decided to paint my name on one of the buildings. What they used for paint was Japanese tooth powder. They mixed it with water and had a rag for a brush. They painted in big letters: “Pappy Boyington here!”

The following morning a Navy plane flew by. We could
see that he was taking a look, because he dipped his wing, this being the usual way a pilot takes a look. Then he circled around and came back again, and we could see somebody in the rear seat grinding a motion-picture camera.

All these months I had been wondering what my reaction would be on being rescued. I could imagine myself crying, maybe laughing and jumping around, doing practically anything. As I looked around, all these prisoners were now doing these things. But for my own part I was numb. I just couldn’t feel. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t laugh.

As the Higgins boats docked, the sailors jumped out and stuck three flags into the sand on the beach. There was little wind, so the flags did not unfurl immediately. But I walked toward the nearest flagstaff, the one on my right, and slowly raised my eyes, letting them follow the flagstaff from the sand to the top. And there on top was a Dutch flag. I lowered my eyes then, and walked over to the second flagstaff, and did what I did before—letting my eyes move slowly up from the sand to the top. There I saw the flag of England. Then I walked over to the third flagstaff, and did the same thing all over again. And on top this time was the flag of the United States.

I had been a slave now for more than twenty months, and as I looked up at this flag now, which had released me, which had made me a free man, I did something which today may seem oversentimental. I did not have a hat on, and I knew that a Marine is not supposed to salute uncovered, but just right then and there I gave this flag the snappiest salute I have ever given her.

As I turned and walked away from the flags, a gentleman I had seen two years previously, when I had a short talk with him, came up to me and stuck out his hand. God knows how he recognized me, because I didn’t look anything like I had two years ago. But there stood Harold Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota.

He said: “God sakes, Pappy, we didn’t know you were alive until we saw that picture the plane took this morning. We were out here on the cruiser
San Juan
. The official signing isn’t going to be for five days, but we couldn’t stay out there anchored just a thousand yards from you boys and let you stay here any longer.”

The Japanese colonel in command of the camp did not
want to turn the prisoners loose because there had not been an official signing, so our American visitors sent back to the ship and brought out a couple of platoons of Marines. The camp commander asked what these people were for, and the answer was: “Oh, just to help things along, help get the boys out of camp.”

So the commander permitted us to leave the camp. The dignified old Japanese colonel, I heard later, had lost his boots, sword, and collar insignia to some of the prisoners. He must have been awfully disgraced.

In the past I had been on many boats going ashore. They had been called liberty boats. But this was the first time I ever took the first one away from shore back to the ship. This Higgins boat took us aboard one of our beautiful hospital ships, the
Benevolence.

I went up the gangway, and somebody told me to go down a certain ladder and turn to the right. As I went down the ladder I was almost bowled over by one of the cutest little nurses I ever have seen. I do not think it was altogether because I had been away from women all this time, for this little nurse was really cute. I did not have presence of mind to say “pardon me” or anything.

I had started to turn to the right, as we had been directed, and then I thought: “Oh no, I had better turn around.” I turned around and said: “Hey you, baby.”

She said: “Hello, big boy.”

I said: “How about a smooch?”

She threw her arms around my neck and about the time we were in the middle of a clinch somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said: “This way, bub. Take your clothes off and take a disinfectant shower, and we will issue some new clothes.”

After getting cleaned up we were sent down to the dining room. If I ever had prayed for a meal, we had just exactly what I would have asked for in our first meal that evening aboard the
Benevolence.
It was ham and eggs.

I had about five orders of ham and eggs, and some poor little starved B-29 pilot sitting across from me just shook his head sadly and said: “My God, Greg. I wish I could put all the stuff away that you do.”

Many of the boys could not eat. I was lucky. I guess part
of the reason I was always able to eat everything that was given to me in Japan was because I was raised on poor man’s food, which consisted of a great many starches. I had very little dysentery all along the line. Most of the prisoners were troubled terribly with this.

After a short screening by the medical department, those of us who were permitted to travel were put off onto another ship. I immediately found an icebox next to my stateroom, and while I was looking at it a Navy chief walked up to me and told me that if I wanted anything just to help myself. So that is where I spent most of the next two days. A couple of old chiefs came in there and were talking to me and one said: “We thought we had a new chief aboard.” I guess I really made myself a member of their mess, twenty-four hours a day.

After the third day being aboard ship I was looking over the railing out to sea, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and there were about fifteen news correspondents staring me in the face. They had a microphone setup, shoved it in my teeth, and said: “Talk, brother.”

I did not know what to say, but finally I managed to blurt out how happy I would be to go home and whatnot, and then I said hello to my eldest child and told him when I got home I was going to take him hunting, for I remembered it was getting near the season, early fall, back home.

(Incidentally, after I did get home a long letter was waiting for me from some woman in New York. She had a cat monogram on her stationery, and after welcoming me home in one sentence she then went on at great length to write how horrible she thought I was to go hunting, as if “you haven’t had your blood lust satisfied now.”)

After being out in Tokyo Bay for four or five days watching our planes go by in review and formation over Tokyo, and this time they were not dropping bombs, I was taken to an airport outside of Yokohama, and I started for home in one of the first planes to go back to the United States.

On the flight from Tokyo to Guam the pilot of the DC-4 was an old friend of mine, and he asked me to stay in his quarters in Guam and not in the hospital. We got in his quarters and he, being real kind to me, fried up bacon and
eggs, and also poured me a stiff drink of good old United States bourbon and soda. I got about halfway down this glass and said: “I’m awfully sorry to turn this down, I know it isn’t like me, but I just can’t seem to get it down.”

I labeled it stupidity for a long time, but now I appreciate that it was pure insanity. This reaction, or aversion to bourbon, really made my mind tick, for I was thanking prison camp for finally making alcohol difficult to swallow. Never, for a second, facing the fact that my run-down condition was the most logical reason for my not wanting it. And as time went on, I didn’t even thank prison camp or the Japanese for apparently removing my obsession to drink, as I was more than willing to accept all the credit for myself. My great will-power, that’s what did it!