Tears in the Darkness (54 page)

That spring, American bombers were mobilized for a massive air attack on Japan. On March 10, a little after midnight, the first planes in a force of 334 B-29 bombers carrying two thousand tons of incendiaries,
oil-gel and jellied gasoline bombs, appeared over Honshū. Their target was Tokyo, and their mission was to set the city ablaze. When they were finished, almost sixteen square miles of the enemy capital was in ashes. More than one hundred thousand Japanese men, women, and children were killed in the six-hour conflagration; a million more were injured; a million lost their homes. In the days that followed, the B-29s set Nagoya, Ōsaka, Kōbe, and other Japanese cities aflame.
¹⁰

On April 1, American naval and ground forces continued their push north, invading the Japanese island of Okinawa, just 340 miles from Honshu. The fighting was savage and grim, with no quarter asked or given. As American casualties mounted, scientists at a secret location in New Mexico pushed ahead with the development of a new, experimental weapon, an atom bomb. Such a weapon, American leaders concluded, might bring the Japanese to their knees, end the war early and forestall the need to invade the Japanese home islands.

Germany formally surrendered in May, and the war in Europe was over. The next month the leaders of the United States, Britain, and Russia met at Potsdam, Germany, to talk about the economic and political shape of postwar Europe. In their final report they also defined the terms for a Japanese surrender. “We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation,” they wrote, “but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.”
¹¹

 

IN THE WORK
and slave labor camps, American prisoners of war, reading the glum faces of their supervisors and eavesdropping on the gossip of a few friendly guards, could see that their keepers knew the war was lost. And the Americans began to worry that the Imperial Army, either out of military expediency or as an act of final revenge, might issue orders to work camp commanders to kill the seventy thousand prisoners of war being held in the home islands.
¹²

At Omine-machi that spring, the mine guards ordered a group of prisoners to dig a long trench in the barracks compound and cover it with steel reinforcing rods, timbers, and mounds of dirt. The ditch was an air-raid shelter, the prisoners were told, but many of the men, especially Irwin Scott and a few of his fellow marines in camp, huddled together and imagined a more perfidious purpose. “They're going to shove us in there and slaughter us,” Scott told his comrades, a suspicion soon shared by almost everyone in camp.

That summer, as homeland shortages and suffering increased and Japanese fear of a ground invasion mounted, the guards at Omine began to taunt their charges. “If America ever invades our islands,” they said, “we are going to shoot you, all of you.” So the prisoners sat down and made a plan. At the first sign of trouble—if the guards, say, attempted to herd them into the long trench—they would stage a “general uprising, kill anyone we can get ahold of,” then break out of the camp, head into the hills around the mine, and try to hold out until the American invaders could rescue them.
¹³

 

WHEN THE AMERICAN
B-29
Enola Gay
dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, the sound of the blast reached the city of Omine, fifty-five miles away. At the colliery, the men heard the rumble of the bomb and felt the vibrations for what seemed like several minutes.

About an hour later, a huge smokelike cloud seemed to block the
sun. The prisoners, who had been tracking the flights of American bombers for weeks, guessed that their air force had dropped a very large conventional bomb, perhaps one of those “blockbusters” they'd heard the British were using in Europe.

In the days that followed, the Japanese civilian guards and mine supervisors seemed especially short-tempered and peevish, quick to strike. Clearly, something was up. The prisoners huddled in their barracks. What should they do? Take a chance, break out of the compound, and head for the hills? Or wait?

After breakfast on August 16, the Japanese commandant of the camp and the British major who was the senior officer in charge called an assembly of prisoners in the mess hall. The commandant announced there would be no work that day, which was strange, since the day before had been the prisoners' regular day off. Some of the men were uneasy, ready to act. Then, in a steady voice, the commandant said that Japan had surrendered to the Allies, and he, in turn, was surrendering the camp to the British major. The war was over.

At first there was quiet. Ben Steele and Irwin Scott and Dan Pinkston and John Crago and the rest of them just sat there and stared at the two officers standing in front of the room. For months the guards had been telling them, “You'll be old men with canes by the time you get out of here,” and there were moments, moments without heart or hope, when they believed them. Now, the enemy had surrendered. Just like that, after breakfast.

A few men clapped, politely. A few others began to cry.

“Thank you, God,” they said. “Thank you.”

Ben Steele shut his eyes. He thought, “I haven't seen the family since October 1940, almost five years. I wonder if they're all still alive.”

Later, their officers told them they were to stay in camp and wait for the Allies to land and find them. They should be patient; there were lots of camps to liberate. Meanwhile, American aircraft would drop food to them, the officers said. They should get ready. They'd soon have something to eat.

August 31, 1945

To any American that can read this letter

We're writing this en route to Japan where we'll attempt to find you fellows

and drop these supplies. Before going into a long letter here are a few

instructions:

The other day we were up over a couple of P.O. W. camps and dropped supplies. The results were tragic. The oil drums in which the supplies were packed went careening down on the P.O. W.'s and their barracks and injured several fellows. Two were killed because the chutes failed to open. The men had gathered together in a bunch and I think a barrel went right into the middle of them. This time we intend to go a little higher and give the chutes more time to open. We also have instructions not to drop the supplies right in the camp, but near it. So watch out for the stuff as it comes down and watch where it goes and get it as soon as possible because we don't want the Japs to get it any more than you do . . .

It won't be long before you all will see American troops. A few special troops have already landed in Tokyo to prepare for the occupation forces which are coming in the near future. The Pacific Fleet is in Yokohama Bay waiting for MacArthur to lead the boys ashore. Incidentally, in case any of you were in the Philippines, Gen. Wainwright has been found in a Prison Camp on Manchuria by the Russians and is now in China witnessing the surrender of the Japs there.

The damned war is all over but the signing of the papers. Hold on a bit longer, fellows and you'll be on your way home. You're top priority on the list to go back “Stateside.”

The crew of V-23
Capt. Edward P. Gumphrey
322nd Air Division
¹⁴

 

Pamphlets that came with the food and clothing advised the men not to gorge themselves; they should start with fruit juice and soup, give their starved systems a chance to adjust to food rich in protein, fats, complex carbohydrates. They should go slow, eat light.

They ate everything. Chocolate, crackers, canned bread, meat, vegetables. They rushed to the parachutes, dumped the drums on the ground, got down on their hands and knees, and ate until they were sick. Then they rolled over, vomited, wiped the puke off their faces and started all over again.

The drums held cigarettes too (Old Golds, Lucky Strikes, Chesterfields) and the men chain-smoked night and day. “Damn place looks like it's on fire,” Ben Steele thought, puffing along with rest of them.

After two weeks of waiting, they got word to proceed to the Omine city railroad station, and on September 15 they boarded trains, along
with men from four other prison camps in the area, for Wakayama City near Wakanoura Bay, where the hospital ships USS
Consolation
and USS
Sanctuary
were anchored and waiting.

At Wakanoura beach, medical crews had set up receiving centers, and each man was stripped (his clothing was burned), given a bath or shower, sprayed with DDT, issued new trousers and a shirt, and given a physical. Then they boarded launches and were carried out to the ships, where they were put in pajamas and assigned a bed.

Most had the same complaints and conditions: enlarged livers (many were jaundiced) and weakened hearts. Malnutrition had also caused their optic nerves to degenerate, and a number had eye trouble. They suffered from bronchitis and respiratory infections—all that coal dust in the dank mines. Many had roundworms, boils, skin ulcers.

Psychiatrists, curiously, found them “in excellent condition, displaying both patience and gratefulness,” behavior apparently taken as a sign of stability instead of what it was, the habit of stoic acceptance that had allowed them to survive three years of torment and want. Doctors also noted that the men's “descriptions of horrible experiences were characterized by a tendency toward understatement.” As if the men knew already that their stories of surrender and imprisonment might be too much for the uninitiated to hear or understand.
¹⁵

 

LIFE ABOARD
the
Consolation
was sweet. For the moment they had everything they could want. Hot food, ice cream, cigarettes, pitchers of steaming coffee. And sheets, clean sheets starched snow-white. It felt so good to lie on them that Ben Steele refused to shut his eyes. He was happy, as happy as he could remember, and he didn't want that feeling to pass or to waste one second of it sleeping.

The nurses aboard the hospital ships (thirty on the
Consolation)
were as curious about their charges as their charges, libidos awakening, were about them. The women were accustomed to being around men hardened by combat or rough around the edges from the rigors of war, but there was something different, something very different about these POWs.

Lieutenant Doris Schwartz, a nurse on the USS
Marigold,
noticed some of her patients wandering about the ship, touching this thing and that, “as if to assure themselves of their reality.” All of them seemed awed by the smallest things, conveniences everyone else took for granted.
Showers, for instance. They would stand under the hot water so long, they “emerged glowing.” Others would sit for hours flipping through magazines—
Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Life
—didn't make any difference how old the issue was. During the years they'd been away, there had been dramatic changes at home, and now they sat up in bed wide-eyed, slowly turning the pages hour after hour trying to catch up.

Most of all, they ate. Oh, how they ate! After a while the nurses and doctors tried to shrink their portions and limit their trips to the chow line, but “stealing food to live” had made the POWs artful dodgers and the nurses found chicken legs, bread, fruit, and pie “hidden under pillows, in pajama pockets, everywhere.” “The appearance of food,” Lieutenant Schwartz noted, “makes animals of them again.”
¹⁶

On September 22, the
Consolation
made port at Okinawa, and the men from the Air Corps, Ben Steele among them, boarded airplanes for the long hops back to the States: first to Guam, then Hawaii, and finally, on September 30, American soil, San Francisco, where they were checked into the army's Letterman General Hospital. After they were settled, most had the same request: Could they please use a telephone?

Ben Steele had trouble connecting. Finally an operator came on the line and told him there was no such exchange. He asked for information, had to be a listing for a Ben or Elizabeth Steele somewhere in Billings, he said. But there wasn't. All right, he said, connect him to the police department. Maybe they could locate the folks. The cops commiserated but couldn't help. Never mind, he'd call his Uncle Jimmy, his father's brother. If Jimmy was home, he'd know where the folks were.

The operator put the call through. The phone rang. A girl, a young girl from the sound of her, came on the line.

“Hello?” she said brightly.

“Hello,” he answered back.

“Who's this?” the girl said.

“This is Bud.”

A long silence, then the sound of a telephone handset hitting the floor. Goddamn, he thought, she must have fainted.

“Hey! . . . hey!” he yelled.

Then in the background he heard shouting. “It's Bud! Everybody, it's Bud!” Chairs rattled on a wooden floor and from the footfalls and all the shouting, it sounded like people were running around in circles. “It's Bud,” he heard someone yell again. “Good Lord, it's Bud.”