Above the Thunder (31 page)

They reached the Hollandia vicinity only to find that it had been taken by the Americans, and the remnants of the once powerful Japanese force there were hiding in the forested hills several miles inland. Never mind, said the Japanese leader, they would go on to Sarmi. Surely the Americans were not there, too. But as they struggled through the jungle to bypass the Americans at Hollandia, they found that the Japanese soldiers hiding in the hills were not always friendly to these laborers, these Okinawans. In fact, it seems that there were instances of starving Japanese soldiers killing Okinawans for food. Whatever the truth of that, the strength of the labor unit dwindled quite rapidly, and less than two hundred completed the circuit of Hollandia and began the 120-mile march toward Sarmi. By this time, the men were quite weak and morale had disintegrated. They were desperate for food and nearly all were ill, tormented day and night by the myriad mosquitoes and other insects, threatened by snakes and crocodiles—and the locals.

A mere handful of them finally, in desperation, approached a village—the same one, I believe, where I had found the two errant corps pilots down on the beach. But to the starving, practically helpless Okinawans, the people were anything but friendly. Apparently, only two managed to escape death at their hands.

After a further tortured march of some thirty miles, those two reached Maffin Bay, and there they found more Americans: Tornado Task Force. For two days they lay out in the jungle among the roots of huge trees and debated whether to continue searching for friendly Japanese or come in and surrender to the Americans. On their second day out there, Company G of the 123d Infantry, camped right beside our airstrip, test-fired its mortars. The rounds happened to burst very close to the two miserable Okinawans, and one of them made up his mind to come in and surrender. The other was determined to continue on up the coast. And so they parted.

It was still dark next morning as the men of Company G filed sleepily through their chow line. One scrawny little guy with his fatigue hat pulled down over his face held up a canteen cup to the server, who withheld the ladle of powdered eggs and asked if the soldier didn't have a mess kit. There was no reply, just the lowered head and the thin hand holding the canteen cup out for food. The mess server leaned over and looked under the brim of the old hat—into the frightened eyes of an Asian.

“Hey! This here guy is a Jap!”

The people we had relieved at Maffin Bay left us no maps to show the dense antipersonnel minefields they had emplaced in front of the defense perimeter. One of our officers had lost his legs to one of those mines. Manned log bunkers and pillboxes were only thirty feet apart all along the perimeter, and in front of them were entanglements of barbed wire, which concealed trip wires for explosives and noisemakers of various kinds. Yet this poor, weak, sick, and exhausted little man, in the blackness of night, had made his way into the enemy camp, equipped himself with parts of an enemy uniform and mess gear, and had the courage to try to enjoy a meal with the enemy troops.

I had spent some time with our battalion interpreter and had learned a few words of Japanese, so he invited me to go with him when he interrogated this prisoner. He was the only prisoner the task force had, so the “POW compound” was quite small. In fact, it was about the size and style of a hog pen. A wire fence enclosed a mud hole about the size of the average American living room. Across one corner a few planks were loosely placed, but they provided no real protection from the elements or the mosquitoes. In the middle of the pen was a narrow plank, and on that, the center of which was sunk into the mud, lay the Okinawan, his head resting on an empty C-ration can.

When we walked up to the fence, he got up, faced us, and bowed gracefully in the Japanese way, smiling politely. The interpreter told him that we wanted to ask him some questions, and he nodded agreeably. I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted with evident pleasure. Of course, the interpreter did nearly all the questioning and he translated all the replies for me, but he did allow me to ask a few questions that
I had prepared in advance. I was gratified to note that the prisoner understood me without difficulty.

He answered all our questions honestly, I believe, and out of his answers came the story I have related. Along with the other Okinawans, he had been drafted to serve in the labor battalion and had worked on Palau before coming to New Guinea. But he denied all knowledge of matters involving the Japanese forces other than his own unit. Of course, he was soon evacuated from our area. I hope he eventually got home and is still enjoying life. He was a nice guy, with sustained courage such as most of us don't possess, I'm afraid. And I hope that his buddy, too, survived the war and has lived a happy life since. I mean that most sincerely. What tales they could tell!

There were a couple of other Japanese that I know of who got inside our perimeter there at Maffin Bay. One night I was sitting in my tent, reading by the light of a Coleman lantern, when Mel Harker, another occupant, ran in and hastily turned out the light.

“Get your gun!” he said. “There are Japs in the perimeter!” And then he dashed away toward the CP.

I took my carbine out of its plastic cover, thanking myself for having traded Rudy Krevolt my pistol for it. For a moment, I stood listening outside the tent. A short distance away, over near the dirt road that wound past our camp, I could hear men running, a few shouted words, intermittent small arms fire. Not knowing what the situation might be, I crouched down beside a large log and watched for a silhouette against the slightly lighter background of the sky, but nothing appeared. I was all alone. The shooting soon ceased, the shouting stopped, and I heard the quieter voices of men coming back from the road into our area.

This was at a time when the equipment and supplies of Task Force Tornado troops were being loaded on vessels standing offshore in preparation for our movement to other climes. Two of our men who had been working at the beach were driving back to the Headquarters Battery area when the lights of their truck picked up two men walking beside the road. The men held their arms over their faces as if to shield their eyes from the lights, but one of our men recognized them as Japanese. They drove on into our nearby CP area and told Major Hadfield about
it. He called one of the infantry companies near the scene, and a squad was dispatched to investigate. Meanwhile, Major Hadfield went alone to try to locate the intruders. The affair ended in a brief gunfight in the darkness, in which Hadfield and the infantry squad killed a Japanese lieutenant and a sergeant.

Investigation determined that these two individuals had been in our midst for probably two weeks, living in a hole under the roots of a large tree in a clump of grass and weeds just across the road from the 122d FA Bn CP. The hole was still stocked with American rations and Pall Mall cigarettes—which we Americans had not seen since arriving in the Southwest Pacific. When our men spotted them, the daring Japs were going toward the task force CP, where General Myers was holding a premovement conference and briefing with all the senior commanders. The two Japanese were well armed with pistols and grenades, and it was suspected that they may have intended a suicidal attack on the officers there.

To protect our withdrawal from Maffin Bay and, thereafter, to evacuate the cemetery and close out American occupancy of the locale, elements of the 93d, a black division, had been brought in. They were totally lacking in combat experience, so our boys had made the most of the opportunity to kid them a bit. There were awful stories told of such things as Japanese infiltrators slitting the throats of Americans while they slept. It just happened that the very first night those troops spent at Maffin Bay, the incident of the two Japanese took place right beside their camp. It seemed to erase any doubts they may have had as to the veracity of the throat-cutting tales, and loud challenges were frequently heard in their area for the rest of the night.

My lost plane was not replaced while we remained at Maffin Bay, the
Arizona Keed
did double duty, with both Vin and me flying her. Then came the day when the boys dismantled and packed the
Keed
in her crate, and filled
Booby Trap
's crate with section supplies and tools. We were all set to go. Only one air section task remained to be done.

There had been very little visiting between Maffin Bay and Hollandia. I had made one trip down there, during which I visited the 24th Division and saw my flying school classmates and friends Bud Kelly, Lee Guild, and John Brady, the division air officer. They were under trees on a hillside, while out on the flats in front of them fighters, bombers, and transports raised huge, blinding clouds of dust everywhere they went.

But one of those bombers was piloted by an adventurous fellow who decided to get off the beaten path. Without really asking, he took somebody's Stinson L-5 one day and flew it up to Maffin Bay. It might not have been too bad a trip, except that just as he arrived in the vicinity of our little strip, the old Lycoming quit on him. He came in dead-stick, clipped the top of a pyramidal tent, smashed into a quarter-ton trailer, and rolled the L-5 up into a little ball on the approach end of our runway.

The hero was taken back to Hollandia nursing minor injuries. The AAF sent out a representative to strip the L-5 of usable parts, and the engine block was left lying there on the ground.

As we prepared to ship out, Task Force HQ told us that we must leave nothing behind that could possibly be used by the enemy and said that the engine block must be destroyed. OK, we said, we'll bust it up with a sledgehammer. No, no, no! We'll send the engineers over to destroy it. Fine!

An engineer sergeant came over, measured the diameter of the engine, did some computations, pulled off a cylinder head, and stuffed in several quarter-pound blocks of dynamite. Then he set it off.

The Japanese could hardly have done more damage with a hundred-pound bomb. There was an explosion that blew the engine to smithereens, and fragments flew in all directions. Nearby Company G tents were ripped. A man sitting on his canvas cot while cleaning his rifle was slightly disturbed when a piston descended through the top of the tent, passed through his bunk no more than a foot from his side, and buried itself in the ground. We had to uncrate the
Arizona Keed
and repair damage done by fragments that went through the crate and plane. But soon we were on our way.

Our Liberty ship lay at anchor off Wakde all through the dark night after we boarded her. Among several officers of battalion headquarters there was a big game of Black Lady Hearts that night. I was the scorekeeper, and, just for the hell of it, I kept the score in Japanese numerals. When anyone wanted to know the score, I told him.

Capt. Norman Olsen, our assistant S-3, consistently lost, and although there was no money involved, losing the game troubled him sorely. After a few lost games, when he asked the score, I told him, and he asked to see the pad. I'm sure he didn't suspect me of falsifying the score, but when the saw the Japanese numerals, which he couldn't read, he became quite angry and left the table. The rest of us gave up the game and followed him outside to stand at the rail on the blacked-out, pitch-dark deck. Out there, Olsen recognized my voice and, in an unpleasant way that was unusual for him, he challenged me.

“Kerns,” he said, “you're so damned smart, I'll just make you a bet. I'll bet you a hundred guilders I can come closer than you can to guessing the depth of the water here.”

“Well, I only have fifty guilders, but I'll bet that. How are we going to determine how deep it is?”

“We'll ask one of the ship's officers. Whatever he says will be it.”

“All right, sir, that's good enough for me.”

“OK, I say it's two hundred fathoms. What's your guess?” said Captain Olsen.

I was astonished. “Did you say
two hundred fathoms,
Captain? Are you sure you know what a fathom is?”