No Ordinary Joes (29 page)

Tim listened for the drone of airplane engines overhead. In the last
two months, air-raid drills had become an almost daily part of the routine at the steel factory. Although there had been no actual bombings as yet, some of the men who’d been captured most recently were saying that American B-29s would soon start bombing Japan. Allegedly, these planes would be taking off from airfields being built on the recently captured Marshall and Solomon islands. Tim had mixed feelings about these rumors. On the one hand, he wanted to see Japan leveled by American bombs. But he knew that the Yawata steel mill and the surrounding industrial complex would most likely be a primary target. He did not want to die from his own country’s bombs.

Soon, the all-clear siren rang out and he breathed a little easier.

Sneaking into the storeroom next to the food galley, Tim looked back over his shoulder to make sure there were no guards in sight. A stack of fifty-pound burlap bags filled with soybeans sat straight ahead.

Of all of his limit-testing capers, he knew this one was the most daring and the one most likely to land him in the dreaded guardhouse. When he’d first spotted the unguarded stack of soybeans, he’d become fixated on pulling off this heist. He knew he couldn’t steal a whole bag, but he thought he could drain out three or four pounds and cover his tracks so that they would never be missed. He planned to sneak them back to his barracks, and each day he could take a couple of pocketfuls to work and bake them with his welding torch.

Quickly, he moved to the stack of soybeans and pulled out a two-foot piece of bamboo he’d hidden inside his shirt. He had cased the job the previous day and knew that the bags were stapled at the top and could not be opened without cutting the bag, so he’d sliced off one end of his bamboo stick at a sharp 45-degree angle.

With a quick jab, he punctured the side of a bag, and then pulled out a pair of borrowed dungarees that he’d knotted at the cuffs. With the hollowed-out bamboo serving as a drain spout, he placed a leg of the dungarees at the end of the drain and watched as the beans flowed smoothly out of the bag, filling a part of one leg, then the other.

Satisfied, he withdrew the bamboo from the bag and watched as the slit closed behind it, resealing the bag good as new. Although he’d taken more beans than he’d initially planned, it was only a hundred yards back to the barracks, where he planned to stash the beans under his bunk.

With the dungarees slung around his neck like an Ivy Leaguer’s sweater, he slipped back out of the storeroom and headed for the barracks, trying to stay calm. But standing directly between him and his barracks was a guard, and the guard was staring directly at him.

Tim continued walking, eyes straight ahead, arms folded across his chest in hopes of camouflaging his contraband.

It didn’t work. The guard stepped in front of him and signaled him to stop. For an instant, Tim thought about running. But he knew that would be useless.

The next morning, he lay curled up in the guardhouse, barely able to move, as the other prisoners filed past him on their way to catch the train to work. Standing next to his cage, a guard angrily pointed at him:
“Daszu dotabo!”
he shouted. (“Bean thief!”)
“Daszu dotabo!”

A
guard summoned Bob to join a work party in unloading a newly arrived truck. It held seventy-two cases, each containing eight cartons of Canadian Red Cross food. Bob wondered how many boxes the Japs would steal. He hoped Captain Fitzgerald, the ranking officer in the camp, would demand all of it go to the prisoners.

Bob now had another reason to admire Captain Fitzgerald: the captain had started secretly keeping a journal in case an accurate account of their treatment would be needed after the war. Fitzgerald scribbled his thoughts in a small notebook he’d stolen from the hospital and kept it hidden under a plank in his cell. In case it was discovered, he was careful about his language.

After his entry of March 14, Fitzgerald talked briefly with Bob during the exercise period, letting him know he’d requested that all of the men from the
Grenadier
be transferred to another camp, but obviously it hadn’t helped. One of the reasons Bob had hoped to be transferred was
that at a new camp the prisoners might be allowed to get mail. Nobody at Ofuna had received anything.

Robert Kunhardt stood in the doorway of Barbara’s apartment on Pine Street, fumbling for the right words. In a couple of days, the
Sawfish
would be sailing for Pearl Harbor to rejoin the war. The overhaul had taken longer than expected, and Kunhardt had been in San Francisco for two months. He and Barbara had seen each other every possible chance during his leave. Sometimes she’d walk straight from her job as a file clerk at Southern Pacific and meet him for dinner; other nights they’d go dancing or out for drinks. He was usually in his dress whites, and other patrons often bought them drinks, a way of contributing to the war effort.

There was so much Barbara liked about Robert Kunhardt, including the fact that he was an officer and a graduate of Annapolis, where he’d been captain of the sailing team. He talked of one day becoming an admiral. Clearly he had ambition, and her parents had repeatedly told her that she should find somebody who would be able to provide for her, and not just on a sailor’s salary. Kunhardt had grown up in affluence in Greenwich, Connecticut; his family owned a successful import-export business and was able to send him to fancy prep schools during the Depression. He talked about taking her back east after the war to meet his family, and spoke fondly of his mom and dad. He wanted to own his own yacht and told her he’d take her to fancy lawn parties on Long Island’s North Shore like something out of
The Great Gatsby
, a book he loved. She couldn’t remember Bob ever reading a book.

Lieutenant Kunhardt seemed mature and sophisticated. Barbara had never been anywhere outside of Oregon and California, and his stories of New York and Washington, D.C., sounded so worldly. She also liked to listen to him talk about the submarine and his duties as an officer. It all sounded so brave, yet at the same time frightening. She’d already lost Bob, and the thought of losing another man seemed unbearable.

But for all the attraction and all the promise of an entrée into a world
of privilege and class, she wasn’t yet ready to completely give up hope for Bob; it seemed almost unpatriotic. After all, they were still married. What if he was still alive? What if one day he came home and learned that she’d run off with another man? It had been only ten months since he was reported lost. What kind of wife wouldn’t wait twice as long, or ten times as long? Her dilemma wasn’t helped by the fact that she didn’t know any of the wives or family of the other men on the
Grenadier;
there was no one to share her grief with or seek comfort with. There was also the simple fact that he was, after all, her first true love, and down deep, she still loved him. Of all the guys she’d dated, he was the most passionate and romantic and daring. Kunhardt, for all his intelligence and bright future, was a by-the-book guy. The first time she’d brought him back to her apartment (her roommate was in the hospital), she had been the one to initiate making love. “You’re still married,” he hedged. “I don’t know if this is right.” She assured him it was. On another occasion, he invited her to a party at the officers’ club at Hunter’s Point but asked her not to tell any of the officers that she was married or that her husband was missing in action. She did as he asked, infatuated with being part of the elite world of commissioned officers, something that was never going to happen with Bob. The only possible red flag she saw with Kunhardt was that he’d imbibed a little too much on a couple of occasions and had been rude to waiters. But she liked to drink, too, so it wasn’t something she worried about.

Standing in the doorway of her apartment, she and Kunhardt fidgeted, both having trouble saying good-bye. During the two months they’d been together, he had repeatedly talked about recent American victories in the Pacific—the Marines taking Bougainville, U.S. troops invading Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands and New Britain in the Solomons, and most recently the capture of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. These were places she’d never heard of, but when he talked of the inevitability of a Japanese surrender, there was strength in his voice and believability in his conviction.

After their final good-bye kiss, he asked if she’d wait for him to return. “Of course I will,” she promised.

* * *

Back in the prison camp at Ofuna, Captain Fitzgerald wrote in his journal:

S
crunched up in his little four-foot by four-foot cement cage after he was caught stealing beans, Tim heard bombs exploding in the distance, then the sound of planes high overhead. He could see Japanese guards running for cover. He knew that the main target for the bombs was the steel mill, where all of his crewmates were at work.

It was June 15, 1944, and for the first time in the two years since Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo in April 1942, American planes were attacking the Japanese homeland. In a plan implemented at the direction of President Roosevelt called Operation Matterhorn, American’s newest weapon, the B-29, had been rushed into combat, its mission to destroy Japan’s ability and heart to wage war. Nicknamed the Superfortress, it was one of the most advanced bombers of its time, featuring a pressurized cabin, central fire-control system, and remote-controlled machine-gun turrets. Manufactured by Boeing and assembled in factories in Washington State, Kansas, Georgia, and Nebraska, the four-engine plane was designed for use primarily as a high-altitude daytime bomber, with a range of nearly 4,000 miles and a capability to fly at speeds up to 350 mph and at altitudes up to 40,000 feet, which was higher than the Japanese fighters could fly and out of range of almost all antiaircraft fire. The long-range plan was to have these planes attack Japan from bases in the Marianas, but American forces had not yet completed construction of the necessary airfields there, so President Roosevelt secured support from India and China to use bases
in those countries for the attacks. This first attack was launched from Chengdu, China, with forty-seven B-29s all loaded with tons of bombs. Their target was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata.

For what seemed like forever, Tim lay curled in his box, helpless, listening to the explosions, worrying that his buddies were being blown to smithereens.

A month had passed since the bombing. Surprisingly, little damage had been inflicted on the steel mill, and although the B-29s had been heard passing overhead again, there’d been no more attacks targeting Yawata. After five excruciating days in the cement tomb, Tim had finally been released, although he was back three weeks later. This time it was because the guards had found a stash of soybeans hidden under his bunk, a stash he was convinced Trigg had planted.