Pacific Sniper

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The battle for Guam was over, but there was still plenty of mopping up to do. US troops now held both ends of the island, from the beachhead where they had initially come ashore to what had been the final Japanese bastion around Yigo and Mount Santa Rosa.

“They were dug in, all right,” Philly said, shaking his head at the vast network of tunnels and caves that the defenders had built.

“Like ticks on a coonhound,” Deke agreed.

“What a hayseed.”

“Keep it up, Philly Boy,” Deke said, but he was grinning.

Clearing the Japanese defenses of holdouts had been a dangerous task that meant going over every inch of the caves. Only a very few survivors were found, most of them cowering in the dark. With the battle lost, they had lacked the conviction to fight to the death or to take their own lives. Deke thought that they might be the only Japs with any sense. Shell-shocked and starving, the few survivors were treated gently by the GIs who found them. Yoshio was put to work interviewing the prisoners, but they had little information to offer because these were almost always enlisted men who didn’t know anything except that they were defeated, thirsty, and hungry.

In the caves, the soldiers made more than a few gruesome discoveries. Many of the Japanese had committed suicide using hand grenades, while others had shed their boots, put the muzzles of their rifles in their mouths, and used their toes to pull the triggers.

Deke saw it all and shook his head, growing increasingly immune to the horrors he saw. He struggled to understand the Japanese propensity for suicide over surrender.

But just when he thought that he had seen it all and that it couldn’t get any worse, he was with the group that found the remains of General Obata, commander of the Japanese forces. He had committed seppuku, the warrior’s ritualistic form of suicide. One of the officers had come along and explained the process, which had required the Japanese general to sit cross-legged, open his shirt, and use a knife to slit open his own belly. Deke cringed at the thought.

The general was then beheaded with a sword wielded by one of his staff officers, who, his task completed, had apparently shot himself.

All that the GIs could do was stare at the carnage.

“These guys did this to themselves rather than be captured?” Philly looked astonished. “I mean, he gutted himself like a fish and then they cut off his head!”

“Clean off,” Deke agreed, realizing that the ritualistic suicide was part of the Bushido or warrior’s code that Yoshio had described to him. He nudged the Jap’s head with the toe of his boot to get a better look at the face. Empty eyes stared up at him. He had seen so much death in the last few days that the sight didn’t bother him. “I’ve got to say, he was an ugly bastard.”

“But tough, all right. He cut open his own belly.”

Deke had a nagging thought. “How do you ever defeat an enemy like that?”

“I know how,” said the officer who had explained the business about seppuku. He reached down to claim the dead general’s sword. “You kill every last one of these Nips, that’s how.”

As it turned out, the worst discovery was yet to come. They returned to the Japanese bunker that, four days before, they had sealed after being unable to wipe out the enemy soldiers inside with gasoline and satchel charges.

They rolled the rocks aside and were greeted with a god-awful smell of death and decay.

The same officer who had claimed the dead general’s katana was there again. He said, “All right, we need to go into that bunker and make sure there’s nothing important down there.”

“I can tell you what’s down there,” Philly said quietly to Deke. They had both edged away, out of the officer’s direct line of sight, to avoid being volunteered. “A whole lot of dead Japs, that’s what.”

Another soldier had the bad judgment to question the officer. “Sir?”

“There could be battle plans or something down there that could help us win this war,” the officer said. “I want you to go down and take a look.”

“Me, sir?”

“Yeah, you. Take along a flashlight. And you’d better wear a gas mask.”

The unlucky soldier made his way down into the bunker. He crawled back out a few minutes later, put his hands on his knees, and vomited.

“Get yourself together, soldier. What did you see?”

“Dead Japs, sir. Hundreds of ’em. Looks like maybe they all suffocated or died of thirst.”

“All right, close it back up,” the officer said.

On the beach, Ernie Pyle was putting the finishing touches on his dispatch.

He had propped his battered portable Corona Zephyr typewriter on a wooden crate. Made in New York state, the typewriter would have cost the average newspaperman a month’s salary — if he’d even been able to get one. Typewriter production had been halted due to the war, and the plant was now making Springfield rifles. The sea breeze fluttered the paper he had rolled into the Zephyr, but the typewriter worked well enough so long as he could keep the sand out of it.

He preferred to write about the individual soldiers fighting this war, to bring home news about their sons and fathers and young men to the good folks of places like Waterbury, Connecticut; Grove Hill, Alabama; and Orrville, Ohio. But this story required more than a few sketches and quotes to put the battle in perspective. While the army brass was reluctant to release official numbers, Pyle had his sources. More than seventeen hundred Americans had died in the fighting, with another six thousand wounded. Most of the wounded were now being cared for on the hospital ships offshore. As for the Japanese, their losses were hard to fathom.

He typed the number and stared at it for a long moment: eighteen thousand. That was a lot of dead Japanese.

Depending on whom you believed, around twelve hundred Japanese had been captured. A relative handful had managed to escape.

With losses like that, it was clear that the Japanese could not sustain this war.

But from what he had seen on Guam, it was just as clear that the Japanese had no plans to give up. For them, surrender was not an option.

He typed the last word, rolled out the paper, stuffed it into an envelope. There might be a few typos, a few sentences that could be smoothed out, but he would let the editors address that.

When he thought about all those dead boys, Americans and Japanese both, he was less concerned with sweating the details of a misplaced comma.

“I either need some coffee or some sleep,” he announced to no one in particular.

After that, it would be time to find his next story. He’d heard rumors that the infantry division that had been fighting here on Guam would be sent to the Philippines, to a place called Leyte. Lay-tee, it was pronounced.

He wasn’t about to put that news in his story and give anything away to the enemy, just in case the censors missed it.

But he could sure as hell pack his typewriter and hitch a ride to Leyte.

More supplies poured onto the island. Now that the airfield was open, crates were being flown in from other bases around the Pacific. Yet more supplies landed on the beach. Pretty soon, it seemed like the island might be in danger of sinking under the added weight. If there was one thing America was good at, it was producing stuff in endless quantities.

Out at the airfield, a soldier worked shifting crates. He had missed all the fighting and felt sheepish about it. All the other guys were getting the glory, and he was getting a sore back and a sunburn.

He jumped back in alarm at the sight of a small snake slithering out from a gap in the crate he had just moved.

“Holy cow!” He reached for a shovel to deal with the snake, but it was already zooming across the sand and into the jungle.

If only he’d been a little quicker with that shovel, future generations of islanders would have given him all the medals he wanted.

The unwelcome hitchhiker was a venomous brown tree snake. Though relatively harmless to humans, the snake proved to have an appetite for tropical birds and their eggs.

With no natural predators, millions of the snakes would eventually overrun the island, wiping out the native birds and even clogging up electrical transformers and plumbing systems.

“Darn snake,” the soldier said, shaking his head and getting back to work.

Deep within the jungle, a handful of Japanese soldiers pressed deeper into the mountains. Caught behind American lines, they had opted to keep fighting rather than surrender or launching a pitiful banzai attack, as many of their comrades had done. Instead, their plan was to wage a guerilla war, keeping hidden in the hills.

“We must not disappoint the Emperor,” said Sergeant Yokoi. Lean and wiry, he was a man of few words, but his face conveyed determination. The Emperor had commanded them to fight, and that was what they would do until ordered otherwise.

Occasionally, they heard American planes overhead, but they were screened from view by the dense canopy of trees. Here in the jungle, everything seemed to be alive and green. Looking around, Yokoi thought with satisfaction that there was everything a man needed to survive, if he was willing to live by his wits and make sacrifices. They dodged a few small Chamorro settlements — already, the local population that had been liberated by American forces was returning to their farms and villages after having been rounded up by the Japanese more than two years before.

“This will do,” Yokoi announced, having arrived at a remote clearing. The men made camp. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. The soldiers staged raids against the Americans and even the civilian villages, mostly stealing whatever they could eat. The warfare took its toll. Men died from their wounds or were killed outright. Some, such as Yokoi, found it was better to survive on their own, but they kept in touch with the others. One by one, those men succumbed to the jungle or simply surrendered.

But not Yokoi. For him, those months turned into years, and the years into decades. Still, he managed to survive and even to carry out his duty as a soldier by harassing the enemy.

One day in 1972, being a much older man than he had been when he first entered the jungle, having grown thin and weak, he found himself captured by two Chamorro fishermen. For Yokoi, the war was finally over. He had survived in the jungle, refusing to surrender for nearly twenty-eight years after the American victory.

He returned to Japan and was hailed as a national hero. But Yokoi did not care for the new Japan, with its fixation on making money and its refusal to honor the past. He moved to the countryside and lived out the rest of his days, his nights filled with vivid dreams of the island jungle.

With tears in his eyes, Private Egan wrapped Whoa Nelly in a blanket and carried her remains to the freshly dug grave.

“Here you go, girl,” he said, his voice cracking. “You can rest easy now.”

Gently, he laid her in the grave, then gave a silent prayer of thanks. There was no doubt in his mind that she had died protecting him. Given half the chance, he would have done the same for her.

Now that the bulk of the fighting was over, the burial details were busier than ever. The bodies of the fallen were being interred in the red dirt of Guam. Ben Hemphill was already buried here, along with Ingram.

As for the dead Japs, they were bulldozed into mass graves — or simply left to rot.

To be sure, the American soldiers weren’t alone in having given their lives fighting for control of the island. Dozens of dogs had gone along with the troops to alert them of Japanese attack and even to sniff out the enemy. It was dangerous duty. Of those dogs, twenty-five had died in combat. They were buried, alongside the troops, in a corner of the cemetery.

Egan straightened up. Soldiers had been assigned to bury the dead, even the four-legged ones, but Egan shook his head as one of the workers stepped forward. He took the shovel from the soldier and bent to the task of filling in the grave. Egan didn’t mind, despite the tropical heat. He thought that it was the least he could do for Nelly.

He was soon sweating freely, the sweat running down his face to mix with his tears.

What was left of Patrol Easy was camped in a dugout on the beach. They had rigged a scrap of canvas overhead to keep off the worst of the tropical sun. Despite the heat and the blazing sun, the beach offered a constant breeze and a respite from the clouds of insects that swarmed them in the jungle. Alphabet and Rodeo napped, while Yoshio read a paperback by Rex Stout. Tony Cruz was long gone, the Chamorro guide having returned to his family now that the island was liberated.

With the battle won, most of the men on the beach had their shirts off because of the heat, their skin turning a darker shade of bronze day by day. Philly had gone a step further and stripped all the way down to his skivvies, although he’d put his boots and helmet back on. Deke thought his buddy looked ridiculous, but that was to be expected where Philly was concerned.

“Not so bad,” Philly remarked, lounging on the sand. “If we had a few cold beers and some broads, I’d almost think I was at the Jersey Shore.”

“I reckon you’d better rest up while you can,” Deke replied. Sitting on the beach might be just fine for Philly, but Deke was getting bored. Growing up on the farm, Deke had never sat anywhere for long. It didn’t feel right to him. He was getting antsy. “We’ll be heading out on patrol before you know it. They say there are still a few Japs out there.”

“Those people just don’t know when to give up.” Philly shook his head. “Say, why don’t you take your shirt off? It’s hot as hell, in case you haven’t noticed.”

It was hot, Deke thought. After a moment’s hesitation, he took off his shirt. He left his broad-brimmed hat on to shade his face. He was lean and well muscled, although his torso bore angry red scars that stood out in sharp contrast against his pale skin. Liberated from the sweaty, dirty uniform, he welcomed the feel of the sun and the breeze on his bare skin. It felt good to be alive — something Deke hadn’t thought in years.

Philly stared. “Are you ever gonna tell me how you got all those scars?”

“Not much to tell,” Deke said, although that couldn’t be further from the truth. “We’ve all got scars, Philly Boy. It’s just that mine are on the outside.”

“Who are you now, Will Rogers?” Philly opened his mouth to say more but was interrupted by a shout. From down the beach, they saw a tall officer approaching. A patch covered one eye.

The men got to their feet as Lieutenant Steele approached, hauling themselves to some approximation of standing at attention.

“As you were,” he said.

“Good to see you, Honcho,” Philly said. “We didn’t know if you’d be back.”

“Do you see any Jap snipers around?” the lieutenant asked, scowling. “That’s good to see you, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Steele grinned. He wore the eye patch that Deke had made for him out of a boot. “Philly, I’m busting your chops. Just don’t go forgetting yourself around any of the other officers.”

“Good to see you, Lieutenant,” Deke said.

Steele reached out and gave Deke’s shoulder a squeeze. It was something his own father had done, and Deke felt a sudden rush of emotion, glad that the lieutenant had returned.

The lieutenant’s eyes widened at the scars across Deke’s torso, but he didn’t say anything. “Good to see you too, son. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know that I’d still be here. They wanted to ship me back home, but I wouldn’t let them. I’m all right, except I still get the world’s worst headaches. You saved my bacon. Hell, I heard how you saved everybody’s bacon. Did you ever get that Jap sniper?”

Deke shook his head.

“Well, don’t worry about it. There will be others.”

“What do you mean, Honcho?” Philly asked.

“We’re shipping out in a couple of days ahead of the rest of the division, which is going to stay here and mop up any remaining Japs. It turns out that you boys now have something of a reputation. Or I should say, Patrol Easy has something of a reputation.”

“Where are we headed, sir?”

“Does it matter? Rest assured that it’s going to have three of your favorite things: plenty of hot weather, jungle, and Jap snipers.”

Philly groaned.

But Deke didn’t mind. He felt as though he was just getting started. He looked out across the sea and narrowed his eyes at the horizon.

Fight another day.