1945 (11 page)

From doctors he heard puzzling comments over the weakening effects of radiation. They wondered why some were spared while others were dying, and they compared notes while in his hearing.

The doctors were perplexed by people who appeared healthy, then collapsed, sickened, and died from radiation poisoning. How, they wondered, did one treat wounds that would not heal and burns that could not be quenched? Almost to a man they cursed the United States for the agony it had brought to Nagasaki. There were no curses for the Japanese government. Whatever thoughts the medics might have had in that regard were kept prudently in check. Anyone might turn someone with dissident thoughts in to the national military police, the
kempei
.

Usually the
kempei
wore ordinary military uniforms with distinguishing red and khaki armbands, and Joe saw several of them. Just as often, though, they wore civilian clothes and kept their identity a secret. From his briefings, Joe knew they were ruthless and, as the situation in Japan deteriorated, were becoming brutal. In many cases, they had the right to inflict summary judgment and punishment upon individuals.

Joe never stayed long at one place, often just a few hours, as he drew himself closer and closer to the center of Nagasaki. As he passed through the devastated and flattened city, he wondered just how the damage at Hiroshima could have been worse, yet he had been told that it was. Kokura, he'd heard, had suffered about as much as Nagasaki.

But it was Nagasaki that interested his superiors in the OSS. Nagasaki was on Kyushu, and that was considered relevant because of the open rumors that gave Kyushu as a probable, but still secret, target for the invasion. Hell, he thought, some secret. Even the Japanese he overheard speculated that Kyushu was a likely place for the Americans to land.

Nagasaki's destruction had occurred more than a month earlier, and the United States was concerned about the effects of lingering radiation on both places and people. Joe'd been given little packets of film to utilize in areas or on things where he suspected radiation. He was told that the extent to which the film was exposed would indicate the strength of radiation. He unobtrusively tagged these and checked them in private.

As he performed these experiments, a disturbing picture emerged. First, while radiation had dissipated somewhat, it had done so inconsistently. Areas in Nagasaki were still so hot that the Japanese had cordoned them off and permitted no one to enter. He wondered what effect the radiation would have on an American army moving through the area.

He found that people who had been under the mushroom cloud when it slowly fell back to the earth were seriously ill, with many of them dead or dying. The bomb had generated dirty outbursts of rain, which contaminated drinking water.

Most disturbing were the continuing incidents of seemingly healthy people who suddenly came down with serious cases of radiation sickness. Joe could only speculate on the causes. Either they had come in contact with something that was radioactively hot and had cooked them, or they had been contaminated earlier and it had taken days, even weeks, for the sickness to reach a point where they were incapacitated.

Joe found both options equally disturbing when he again contemplated the idea of GIs moving about and fighting in the poisoned land.

As to the other wounds he saw, the burns and fractures were nothing he hadn't seen before, only multiplied a thousandfold until the sheer numbers became numbing. That so many civilians had died came as no surprise to his sensitivities either. He had seen what modern warfare could do to Italian villages and knew that death in war was indiscriminate. However, he was concerned by the many cases of blindness. Most people who had seen the atomic explosion had suffered at least some vision damage. It was worth noting and he filed it mentally.

He was also intrigued that not all people near the center of the blast were killed or injured. The many hills in the area seemed to have shielded some from the effects of the blast, although others had been hit by the radiation that fell from the bomb cloud if they were unlucky enough to have it blown in their direction.

It was time to unearth his radio and report. Not only did he have enough information to give his masters, but he felt a strong urge to let them know he was still alive, and that he had not gone down with the
Moray
, which he presumed was listed as missing. He hoped he wouldn't have too much trouble with the code they had given him. Joe would have to keep his messages short and to the point, changing frequencies and radio locations with each message. Trouble was, he now had a lot to say and doing it would entail a lot of risk.

Nomura trudged the weary miles out of Nagasaki and onto the hill where he had squirreled his precious cache of supplies and equipment. With his stomach aching with hunger, he was even looking forward to army rations, although he would have to be careful and not eat them all up. At best, he had enough to last him only a few weeks. After that he was adrift along with the civilian population of Japan.

He looked across the valley and saw motion on a hill about a mile away. Joe squinted and watched. It was definitely a human, although he— or she for that matter— seemed to be moving erratically. Probably someone else who was injured or deranged, he decided, or even one of the numerous blind people. Well, well, he had neighbors. Nothing surprising and certainly nothing to be alarmed about, although he made a mental note to check out the surrounding area once more. With so many refugees about, things could literally change overnight, and there was always the possibility of the
kempei
doing some random snooping.

As long as the threat was not too great, he was not worried about taking care of himself. Along with the radio and the food, the OSS had thoughtfully provided him with a number of weapons, including a couple of Japanese ones. If necessary, he had no qualms about using them on some of those people who looked like him.

Joe glanced across the valley again and realized that the person he'd seen had disappeared from view. Now he definitely thought he should check things out a good deal more thoroughly. And he would take a Japanese pistol with him when he did it.

Their first look at the tortured island of Okinawa came when the C-47 transport plane banked slightly while still several miles away from the long, thin island. From that distance, the island looked to Paul Morrell and Capt. Tom Ruger like a pale strip on the horizon, an item in the vast ocean that was barely worthy of notice.

Okinawa was innocuous and deceptively like a score of other islands they had either flown over or stopped at briefly. Even as they flew closer, they had a hard time thinking of the apparently tranquil patch of land as a cause of so much bloodshed.

"They fought like hell for this place," Ruger muttered. "I wonder what they'll do when we actually land on Japan proper?"

Paul Morrell craned his neck to see out one of the plane's few tiny windows. Okinawa, roughly sixty miles long, narrow, and only 340 miles from the Japanese mainland, had been invaded by Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner's Tenth Army on April 1, 1945. For a while it seemed as if the Japanese weren't going to fight as the Americans overran the northern two-thirds of the narrow island in only a few days, with little in the way of resistance. The army's big problem had been the care and feeding of the thousands of terrified Okinawan civilians who had clogged the island's few roads. The gentle Okinawans had been told that Americans were monsters and they had been delighted to find out otherwise.

But as the Americans moved toward the southern tip, the island became a study in hell. It took until June 22 for them to secure Okinawa, although individual Japanese soldiers and a few small units were rumored to be still hiding in Okinawa's more rugged areas.

Both sides paid an enormous price. Of the almost one hundred thousand Japanese soldiers on the island, only seventy-four hundred had been taken prisoner. Most of those taken were Okinawan militia who had been poorly trained and equipped, and not as fanatic about fighting to the last man as their Japanese neighbors. The nearly eighty thousand Japanese regulars had chosen to die along with their commanding general, Mitsuru Ushijimi, who had committed suicide on the last day of the battle.

General Buckner had been killed in an artillery barrage at about the same time. Nearly eight thousand soldiers and marines had died in the campaign, and another thirty-two thousand had been wounded.

The campaign for Okinawa had brought additional terror as Japanese kamikazes were used in large numbers for the first time in the war. A large number of ships had been sunk or damaged by these kamikazes, and many, many sailors had been killed or wounded. If Okinawa was a forecast of the future, both men felt the future was to be dreaded.

Yet, as Morrell and Ruger drew closer and overflew the anchorage, their spirits were buoyed. The waters around Okinawa were filled with what looked like limitless numbers of warships of all sizes and types, all massing for the assault ahead. Battleships and carriers, along with attendant cruisers and destroyers, were arrayed farther offshore in the deep waters, while transports, landing craft, and other and more plebeian and utilitarian craft huddled nearer the shore.

The island itself appeared to have been transformed into a floating military base. The central and northern portions in particular were an ocean of tents and temporary buildings that made the transit camp back in California look minuscule in comparison. The flatter central portion contained several airfields, and their C-47 landed without incident and taxied quickly off the crowded runway to make room for the next plane. They were just another flight ferrying in from somewhere as part of the huge buildup of forces.

As they climbed, stiff-jointed, out of the transport and onto the hot field, Ruger remarked, "One more plane and the goddamn island's gonna sink, Lieutenant." Several other planes circled and waited their turn to land, while hundreds of others were parked wingtip to wingtip on the fields adjacent to the air bases.

"I almost wonder if there's any room for us. My God, why doesn't someone take a picture of this and send it to the Japs. It'd scare them into surrendering," Paul said in awe.

Ruger and Morrell had arrived at the shattered island several days ahead of the troopship carrying the other officers and the enlisted men of the company. This gave the two men time to reconnoiter the area and make plans for the training the men would have to have. Paul took it as a compliment that Ruger seemed to both like him and respect his opinions. Why the hell hadn't he had a captain like Ruger back in Germany?

Thus, when the rest of their men came ashore from their cramped transport, the situation was fairly well organized. What Paul and Ruger were not prepared for were the sullen looks on the men's faces, along with the hatred and disgust in their eyes. They bitterly resented that they had been sent out to fight while so many of their buddies were heading home.

"Shit," Ruger whispered, "we got a helluva morale problem on our hands. I thought the troops would be unhappy, but this is a lot worse than I ever thought it would be."

With that, Ruger distributed the almost 250 men in his command to their respective platoon officers. Before they got settled in their barracks tents, Paul gathered the sixty men in his platoon around him in a large and informal cluster. Only his platoon sergeant, SSgt. Frank Collins, a rawboned and red-haired Kentuckian, looked even remotely friendly. Collins looked exhausted; it had been a rough and tedious transit from California as he and the other officers and NCOs had gotten little sleep. Much of their time was taken up with breaking up fights.

"Gentlemen," Paul began after Collins introduced him, "how many of you have eighty-five points?"

Eighty-five points was the magic number a man needed to be rotated back to the States and discharged. The number was based on a formula that included a man's total years in service, time in combat, number of dependents at home, and a handful of other things. But the bottom line was simple. Eighty-four or less and he stayed put.

There were exceptions, of course, and they almost always worked in the army's favor. First, the program only included combat soldiers, so support and administrative types were in for the duration. Also, if a person had a unique skill, such as the ability to speak Japanese, then he was screwed no matter how many points he had.

Paul looked at his men. "Since I don't see any hands raised, I guess nobody's going home. Well, I'm not either, and I'm not any happier than you are. In fact, I'm kind of pissed off about it. I don't have eighty-five points or anywhere near that, so we're stuck with each other."

Paul had spent a little time going over their service records and knew that a few of them were achingly close to that magic number. Most, however, weren't anywhere near it.

"Let me be blunt. Like you, I'd much rather be home with my family and friends too, but it's not gonna happen. I'm not going to give you a bullshit rah-rah speech or insult your intelligence about how much we're going to do to win this war. But we're not going home until this thing is over, so we're all gonna have to make the best of it. Captain Ruger's goal, and mine too, is to have everyone make it through this safely. By the way, that includes my ass getting back in one piece too.

"In order to do that, we're going to start first thing tomorrow morning doing some of the hardest training you've ever seen. It's gonna make basic training look like a high school dance. The purpose will be to get you back in shape— some of you look like you haven't exercised since the Japs hit Pearl Harbor— and improve your weapons training along with small-unit tactics. We figure we've got about a month before we ship out, and we're going to make the most of it."

With that, Paul dismissed the men to get a meal and a good night's sleep. He saw Collins looking at him carefully.

"How badly did I do, Sergeant?"

"You gonna be marching with us tomorrow, Lieutenant?"