What the hell were they laughing about? Nobody knew.
Then there was that samurai mindset. In one often-reshared account, Pyle had described how a Japanese officer and six men had been surrounded by marines on a beach. Rather than surrender, the officer had shouted orders to his men. All six had bent down and waited patiently as the officer drew his sword and beheaded each man. The marines then shot him dead.
Germans didn’t do that. All in all, the enemy in the Pacific remained full of puzzling surprises.
“The Japs are dangerous people, and they aren’t funny when they’ve got guns in their hands,” Pyle wrote. “It would be tragic for us to underestimate their power to do us damage, or their will to do it.”
In the Pacific in early 1945, nobody could argue with that.
CHAPTER FIVE
When it came to exploring the abandoned fortifications that the Japanese had left behind, you never knew what you were going to find. Patrol Easy came across items that ranged from abandoned rifles to household goods that had been looted from the wealthier Filipino homes during the occupation, finding everything from random silver spoons to teapots.
The GIs also discovered boxes of tinned crabmeat and fish, identified by the labels that Yoshio translated for them, along with bags of rice. Scattered around were a few odd pieces from Japanese mess kits, which Yoshio explained were called han-gou.
“One thing for sure, the Nips who left all this stuff behind are either dead, or they’re not planning on coming back,” Philly said.
Philly inspected one of the crabmeat tins, then held it up to show Lieutenant Steele.
“Honcho, do you think maybe the Japs poisoned these and left them behind for us?” Philly wondered.
“These are sealed cans, Philly. Do you really think the Japs went to all the trouble to can poisoned food to leave for us? No, the Japs ran out in a hurry, is all. Load up, boys, if you have a hankering for seafood.”
“How many cans do you want?” Philly asked Deke.
Deke just shook his head. If it didn’t have four legs or feathers, he didn’t consider it to be food. “If you find any canned ham, just let me know.”
“Suit yourself.” He held up another can for Yoshio’s inspection. “What does this one say?”
“Tako. Octopus.”
Philly tossed the can away as though it had burned him. “Who the hell eats octopus? I wish they’d left behind something good, like a samurai sword,” he said.
“Haven’t you got enough of those?”
Philly shrugged. “All right, then how about a Jap pistol?”
Deke shook his head. Many of the men were mad for souvenirs, Philly included. “Just don’t set off any damn booby traps.”
Deke was referring to the fact that gathering souvenirs could be dangerous. The Japanese seemed to be aware of the American thirst for trophies of war, and more than one GI had fallen victim to a “surprise” left behind by the enemy. Sometimes it was a cleverly hidden trip wire that triggered a mine. Other times it was simply a grenade hidden under a Japanese body, rigged to detonate when the body was moved.
Killing a single soldier with a booby trap wouldn’t change the outcome of the war. In Deke’s mind, a booby trap was an expression of hatred for an enemy, a last chance to take someone out.
The officers ordered the men to steer clear of the Japanese dead, but the orders were to no avail when there was an Arisaka rifle, Nambu pistol, or especially a sword in plain sight. These weapons were more than the average GI could resist, and some paid dearly when they were lured right into a Japanese trap.
“I remember how I got caught in a booby trap one summer when I was seventeen,” Philly said. “There was this girl named Maria Vinceza, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I mean, I would walk right into traffic. Once I walked straight into a lamppost when she went by. It got so bad that my mother thought I needed glasses. Finally getting to second base with that girl made me pretty damn happy, I can tell you.”
“Sounds like another tall tale to me,” Deke said.
“Believe me when I say her booby trap was as advertised.”
Deke snorted. Philly always bragged about what a lover boy he was, but Deke didn’t believe half of it.
“That is a different booby trap,” Yoshio said, launching into an explanation. That came as no surprise — when other men were playing cards or jawing, their Nisei interpreter could usually be found with his nose in a book, even if it was often a Western novel. “The word comes from sailors who used to catch large birds called boobies in order to eat them. A booby is also an old word for fool. So it is a trap for fools.”
“Thanks for that, Yoshio. I think I prefer my definition of booby trap.”
Mostly, Deke had not given in to the same temptations as his comrades when it came to collecting souvenirs. However, he wasn’t entirely immune, because he did have a thing for knives. One of his prized finds was a beautiful Japanese dagger, more than a foot long, the hilt shiny with gold leaf, the ivory grip decorated with a tiny gold chrysanthemum.
“That is an Imperial Army tantō,” Yoshio had told him, his eyes showing admiration for the ornately crafted weapon. “It certainly belonged to an officer, and a wealthy one at that.”
“I’ll be damned,” Deke said. Only half kidding, he added, “And here I was about to use it to open cans of rations.”
“Please don’t do that with such a beautiful knife!” Yoshio blurted, clearly alarmed.
“All right, have it your way,” Deke said, and returned the knife to his pack, wrapping it first in a scrap of oiled cloth. He had kept it there ever since. After all, he had his own custom-made bowie knife to handle just about anything that came his way, from opening cans to chopping brush to defending his foxhole.
But what they found this morning went beyond mere souvenirs.
It had been Deke who’d made the discovery when the damp earth beneath his boots had seemed to shift and give way, revealing a hidden entrance to a dark cave. The rest of Patrol Easy had halted their advance and used their entrenching tools to clear away more dirt until they realized that the cave entrance was big enough to stand up in. Beyond, there seemed to be a network of caves and tunnels. But the cave mouth was as far as any of them were willing to go.
The grim expressions on their faces conveyed a sense of dread as they stared into the abyss. The air that drifted out was foul and tainted with the odor of death and decay, almost tomb-like. Nobody wanted to go down there, but it was clearly something more extensive than the dugout caves they were used to coming across.
“Looks like we found ourselves a jackpot,” Philly whispered nervously. “What do you think, Deke? Are these caves just another trap waiting to be sprung? You know how the Japs are.”
Deke eyed the dark entryway. “I’m not in any hurry to find out, I can tell you that much.”
Lieutenant Steele studied the entrance, then turned to address his men. “All right, listen up. We’re going in. We can’t just leave a cave like this behind our lines without clearing it first. For all we know, it might be full of Japanese. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks like a booby trap. In other words, don’t touch a damn thing.”
To Steele’s credit, he was the first one into the cave entrance. As they ventured deeper into the tunnels, using their flashlights, the air grew cooler and the walls closed in around them, heightening their unease. Their dim lights seemed to make hardly a dent in the darkness. Rounding a corner, they stumbled upon an underground hospital, with sixteen bunks lined up neatly against the walls, eight on each side, where the tunnel passage had been widened. The bunks had been nailed together out of rough lumber, then lined with thin mattresses that could not have been very comfortable. The mattresses were dirty from use and spotted with brown bloodstains.
Deke shuddered. It was hard to think of a worse place to be lying wounded, in a dark cave in the ground, without much hope of decent medical attention. But his mind stopped short of sympathy. As far as Deke was concerned, the Nips deserved to be miserable. They had killed his friend from basic training on Guam, and they had killed and wounded other good men that Deke had fought beside. He looked over the grim surroundings once more and thought, To hell with ’em.
Another area had been dug out of the wall and rigged with electric lights and what looked like an operating table. A few bloody rags covered the dirt floor surrounding it.
“Look at that,” muttered Rodeo, taking in the sight of used bandages and medical supplies strewn about the narrow room. “This place has seen some use.”
“One thing for sure, the Japs cleared out in a hurry,” Steele said. “Looks to me like they forgot to take a couple of their guys with them.”
Deke surveyed the bunks, his gaze lingering on the lifeless bodies of two Japanese soldiers sprawled across their beds. The sorry bastards had evidently killed themselves rather than face capture. However, at second glance, there were no weapons evident in the dead men’s hands. A more chilling thought was that their comrades had simply killed the wounded that they weren’t able to take with them.
Philly noticed the same thing. “I almost feel sorry for those guys,” Philly said. “Imagine being killed by your own side. I’ve got to say, the Japanese mind is hard to fathom.”
“Good thing for us that it’s not your job to fathom it,” Steele said. “Now stay focused, boys. We’ve got a job to do here and there may be enemy soldiers in this place who are far from dead. Now let’s see if there’s anything useful in this mess.”
As they prepared to leave the hospital wing, Deke couldn’t help but glance back one last time at the two lifeless soldiers, their faces far from peaceful in death, but twisted in pain and despair. Perhaps it was no surprise that, for once, nobody seemed all that interested in searching the bodies for souvenirs.