Authors: Larry Colton
An hour in the shelter stretched to two, then three. The men became more claustrophobic, everyone fidgeting, trying to stay calm, but nervously waiting for the all clear.
Finally, the siren sounded and the guards opened the door. Tim was one of the first to crawl out. He couldn’t help but wonder if getting bombed would be easier.
Near the end of the lunch break at the mill, a small crowd gathered in the open pavement area. On one side were a dozen prisoners, and on the other were guards and civilian workers. In the middle were Rooster Boy and Tim, about to face off in a wrestling match.
Tim hated Rooster Boy. A young man in his early twenties, he was the most athletically built of all the guards. Rooster Boy had singled out Tim as the primary target for his cruelty and sadistic treatment. On several occasions, Rooster Boy pulled Tim out of the roll-call line and hit him for no particular reason other than to humiliate him. When Tim had been locked in the guardhouse after he was caught stealing soybeans, it was Rooster Boy who wrote
Daszu dotabo
(“Bean thief”) on a sign and posted it next to the cage. He’d also been the one to hose Tim with freezing water while he was locked inside.
But nothing that Rooster Boy had done angered Tim as much as an incident the previous week. Tim and one of the pushers in the welding shop had been trying to teach each other vocabulary when Rooster Boy approached and signaled Tim to get back to work. When Tim didn’t move fast enough, Rooster Boy picked up a brick with a pair of tongs and heated it up in a nearby furnace until it was white hot, and then launched it at Tim from close range. Somehow, Tim managed to duck, and the brick missed the side of his face by inches.
Now crouched in a wrestling position, he eyed Rooster Boy, who crouched a few feet away. This showdown had been Tim’s idea, and it surprised him that Rooster Boy had accepted. Tim figured it must be a matter of personal, if not national, pride.
Tim had said that there’d be no judo, but he didn’t trust Rooster Boy to abide by any rules. Although Tim had not wrestled in high school, he had been to a lot of professional wrestling matches in Dallas as a vendor selling soft drinks and candy. He had no illusions of lifting his opponent over his head and body-slamming him to the pavement like Gorgeous George might do, though thanks to his ability to steal food and the extra portions of
bento
that he finessed out of the young boys he worked with, he was in better shape than most of the other POWs. He still weighed only about 120 pounds, but that was about 10 pounds more than most of the men. Speed and agility, not strength and endurance, would be his weapons.
Tim’s strategy was going to go in low, take Rooster Boy’s feet out from under him, and then use his wiry quickness to get on top and pin him.
Cautiously, the two men circled each other, looking for an opening. Behind them, Tim’s fellow prisoners watched nervously.
To a man, the other prisoners had tried to dissuade Tim from challenging Rooster Boy. If he won, he could expect to get punished, or, even worse, a defeated Rooster Boy could choose to take out a loss on everyone. As far as Tim was concerned, one small victory against the Japanese, even if he had to pay dearly for it later, would be worth the risk.
Rooster Boy faked a judo chop, and Tim, spotting an opening, lunged at his legs, catching him off guard. With both arms wrapped around Rooster Boy’s knees, he lifted him slightly and drove him backward, forcing him to the pavement. Seizing the moment, he quickly kneeled on Rooster Boy’s chest and, using the heels of his hands, pinned his shoulders to the pavement.
“Ichi … ni … san,”
he counted, and then jumped off of Rooster Boy’s chest, thrusting his skinny arms into the air in victory.
It was April 13, 1945, two weeks after Tim’s wrestling victory. Returning from another twelve hours at the welding shop, he saw a large crowd of prisoners congregated near the cage. He figured some poor guy was getting the crap beat out of him and the guards were making sure other prisoners watched. He knew the feeling.
To his surprise, Rooster Boy had done nothing to punish him or any of the other prisoners following the match. It was as if he’d lost so much face in front of the other guards that he’d decided to back off. As pleased as Tim’s buddies were about his victory, they had all advised him to lie low. And that’s what he’d been doing, except today. Inside the false bottom of his stool he’d stashed some extra rice that he’d scrounged from the boys in the welding shop. He planned to give it to Gordy.
Tim was worried about his crewmate. Gordy had not been to work in over a week, his health continuing on a steady downhill slide. His stomach was swollen from beriberi. During the day his feet and legs would swell, and sometimes when he woke up in the morning, one side of his face would be all puffy and make him look lopsided. Because he couldn’t work, his portion of rice had been cut, and each day he grew weaker.
Other than an occasional nod hello while they were on the
Grenadier
’s final patrol, Gordy and Tim barely knew each other prior to getting captured. And although they had different temperaments—Gordy quiet and reserved, Tim brash and Texas cocky—their individual brands of toughness connected them. On the train ride back from the steel mill, they often sat together.
The winter of 1944–1945 had taken its toll on the camp, with three or four men dying each day. Only four men from the
Grenadier
had died, but there were now a dozen in dire shape. Recently, several survivors of the Bataan Death March arrived in camp, as well as a group of Javanese prisoners; these men looked even worse than the men in Fukuoka’s sick bay. For Tim, watching the dead being hauled out of camp to the crematorium was a daily reminder that he wanted to survive no matter what it would take. His second anniversary as a POW was a week away.
Tim thought about what his life might be like if he made it home alive. The first thing he would do was take a long hot bath. Then, of course, he would gorge himself on good ol’ American food, with plenty of ice cream and pie. He would drink beer and dance and live life to the hilt. He’d worry later about the moral issues that had been instilled in him by the Baptist Church. After he’d lived it up a little, he’d send a one-way ticket to Valma or maybe he’d go straight to Australia after his release and bring her back to America with him. Of course, it had crossed his mind that maybe she thought he was dead or that maybe she’d met somebody else, but he never allowed those thoughts to linger.
What helped him to stay positive were the reports on the progress of the war now filtering into camp. He’d heard that the American bombing raids had started to seriously hinder the Japanese’s ability to supply their troops, including food, and that U.S. troops had retaken Manila and Corregidor. He wondered if any of the Filipinos who’d bravely come down to the dock at the start of the war and helped load the gold and silver onto the
Trout
had survived. Or had they been part of the Bataan Death March and died like so many others?
Holding tightly to his stool, he arrived at the edge of the crowd gathered near the guardhouse. “What’s going on?” he inquired.
“The Japs posted a sign claiming FDR died.”
At first, Tim didn’t believe it; this wasn’t the first time that story had gone around. But judging from the reaction of the other men, today it seemed more credible. For the most part, Tim was apolitical, but he worried that if the rumor was true, some of the POWs would lose hope. For the moment, however, his bigger concern was getting past the guard standing near his barracks. It was Rooster Boy.
Walking toward the guard, Tim kept his eyes straight ahead. This wasn’t the time to get too cocky or shoot Rooster Boy a defiant glare. He could feel Rooster Boy’s eyes boring a hole right through him. He continued on his path, and when he was a few feet away, he switched the stool to his left hand and issued a salute with his right, just like all the prisoners did when approaching a guard. He made sure it was snappy and by the book.
Rooster Boy didn’t respond, letting Tim pass. No smile, no snarl, no salute back. Tim and his stool entered the barracks. He looked around for Gordy, but there was no sign of him.
S
ome guys let each bite of rice linger in their mouths, trying to suck the nutrients out of each grain. Others wolfed it down like dogs. Gordy’s approach was somewhere in between. On this evening, however, he was devouring the large serving of rice Skeeter had brought him, trying to polish it off before a guard spotted him with the extra serving. He’d been in the
benjo
when Tim first returned.
Outside the barracks, he heard several guards jabbering in excited voices. He didn’t know exactly what they were saying, but he could decipher enough to know it was about FDR’s death.
Gordy felt the tears start to well up. Spotting Skeeter, he motioned him closer. He wanted to thank him for his generosity. Skeeter had put his own safety on the line for Gordy’s health, not to mention that he was giving away food he could just have easily taken for himself. If the guards had caught him, they would surely have thrown Skeeter back into the bunker. Gordy reached out and grabbed Skeeter’s hand, but the words wouldn’t come; the lump in his throat was too big. Finally, he whispered, “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Just stay alive,” said Skeeter. “That’s all you need to do.”
June 10, 1945. Gordy watched his crewmate Tom Courtney, a thoughtful guy from Michigan, making another entry into the little journal he had stolen from a supply room and kept hidden under his bunk. Back at the
Convent on Light Street, Courtney had been one of the sickest men, but he had rebounded. Now his occasional jottings were the only written documentation by any of the crew at Fukuoka #3. Gordy asked if he could read it. Courtney hesitated, then handed him the journal.
Dawn was breaking and a guard ran through the barracks, screaming for everyone to get up. Gordy struggled out of his bunk. He wasn’t sure if it was from the extra rice Tim had been giving him, but he felt well enough to go to work at the steel mill even though he was still moving slowly.
Exiting the barracks, Gordy tried to quicken his pace, but it was not fast enough for the guard, who ran at him from behind, slamming his rifle butt hard into Gordy’s back. The force of the blow knocked him off his feet, driving him face-first into the baked dirt.
As he struggled to get up, the guard kicked him, his boot drilling
Gordy square in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. The guard raised his rifle butt over his head and swung it hard at Gordy again. Gordy rolled to his left, the blow glancing off his arm. Quickly, he scrambled to his feet and fell into line with the other men nearby, escaping further injury. Now he probably had a cracked rib.
From Gordy’s point of view, the punishment from the guards had escalated again in June. He was sure it had to do with the relentless pounding Japan was taking from the almost daily B-29 bombings. The more extensive the destruction by the bombers, the more the guards took it out on the POWs.
On March 9 and 10, 302 B-29s had taken off from Guam and hit Tokyo with their incendiary bombs, igniting a firestorm that killed 84,000 civilians and torched 16 square miles. Only 14 B-29s were lost. The next week, the cities of Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe were hit, killing 120,000, with 20 planes lost. In April, the Japanese aircraft factories in Nakajima and Nagoya were destroyed.
LeMay’s new strategy of incendiary bombing was having a devastating effect. In April and May, Tokyo was hit again, with an estimated 200,000 killed, and although 43 B-29s were lost, over 50 percent of the city was completely destroyed. And then on May 29, 454 B-29s, escorted by P-51 Mustangs flying from Iwo Jima, targeted Yokohama. Although 4 B-29s and 3 P-51s were lost, 26 Japanese Zeros went down, and a large portion of Yokohama was laid to waste. A week later, Kobe was hit so hard again that it was no longer listed as a target. By mid-June, most of the large Japanese cities were so thoroughly gutted that LeMay switched targets, ordering the incendiary raids on 58 smaller Japanese cities.
By the end of June, the Japanese civilian population was in full panic. For the first time, the Imperial Cabinet considered negotiating an end to the war, but the Japanese military rejected the idea, determined to fight to the bitter end.