Baa Baa Black Sheep (34 page)

When we anchored in Rabaul Harbor, a small boat similar to one of our navy Higgins boats came alongside and was secured to the sub. This time they blindfolded me, tied my hands, and marched me over the gangway into this small boat. I didn’t know it then, but I learned later that, when the Nips so much as took a prisoner across the street, they always blindfolded him first.

Before being blindfolded I had noticed that about twelve Nippon sailor boys with rifles were in this small boat, and now, as I sat there on the deck blindfolded, they kept clicking the bolts in those rifles. It seemed to me, by this sound, that they deliberately were trying to tell me they comprised a firing squad for after we got ashore.

When we landed, they led me up the coral streets of Rabaul. I couldn’t see a thing and I was limping along on a shattered ankle. To help me along, they would boot me in the hind end with rifle butts. Finally they stopped me in front of what must have been some kind of building. My bare feet had been cut something terrific, because coral is just like walking on broken glass to feet that are not used to it. In front of wherever it was that we stopped an Americanized voice addressed me: “How would you like to be with your friends?”

“Jesus,” I thought, “maybe he means these fighter pilots we’ve been knocking off all the time. That wouldn’t be too good.” And then I thought: “Well, maybe he’s referring to where I’m going, either up or down, after they’re through with me.” Finally I answered: “I don’t believe I know what you mean.”

He said: “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

In the house or building, or whatever it was, I could hear a lot of tinkling of glasses, a piano thumping, and
women’s hilarious voices in a language I didn’t understand. I wondered if they were going to take me in there and put me on display without any clothes on. It was horrible enough, but the blindfold made it seem so much worse by turning one’s imagination loose upon himself. I gave a sort of prayer while I was forced to stand there: “I hope to God they give me a couple of drinks for the road from one of their sake bottles before they do away with me.”

Finally they threw me in a truck and drove me on up some street. I was then taken out and put in a small wooden building, and the blindfold was taken off at last, and then a feeling of complete relief came over me for a moment. This, I was to find, was their third-degree room. Off on my left about two feet stood a goon I imagined must have been the world’s champion judo boy, because he possessed a pair of tremendous cauliflower ears and had a pair of hands that, when he pounded on you, felt like a pair of boards.

The Americanized voice I had heard before was there in front of me again, and I later found out he was a boy who had gone as far as high school in Honolulu before his parents had sent him on to Japan for further education. The first question they asked me through the boy was my name. I already had given that, so I told them. Then they asked me my rank, and I told them. Then they asked me my serial number. Now this, by international law, is all they are allowed to ask you. But I was probably the only one in the Marine Corps who didn’t have a serial number because I had not received one after I had been reinstated. When I maintained after an hour that I didn’t have a serial number, they finally believed me and stopped slugging me and twisting the ropes like tourniquets, the ropes that were holding my hands together. They had another quaint trick in the third-degree room, that of putting out cigarette butts on your neck and shoulders.

They brought in first one area commander and then another in the course of that evening, and they asked me this question and that question. Of course, as I was a fighter pilot, there was not a darned thing I knew that could help them, and I began to realize the fact. I didn’t have any idea that the Marshall and Gilbert campaigns were coming off soon; they had to tell me all about that. Then there was one snaky-eyed individual with about ten pages of radio calls. Of course, we used to change these calls from time to time, but just the
same he read off each one and then looked at me and his eyes twitched behind his glasses as he said: “You know, don’t you?”

Finally I just threw up my hands in disgust and said: “Honest to God, I don’t. How the hell could I?”

Some of these officers were able to speak a fair brand of English, although I was certain they had never been in the United States, but they didn’t seem to be capable of understanding my brand of English. They had to rely, partially at least, on their interpreter’s version. Between officers there was usually a short break, and I welcomed the chances to talk to Suyako, which I came to find out means interpreter.

I came to like Suyako in a very short time, and finally appreciated that he was in much the same boat as I found myself. He gave me as much of a tip as he dared real early in the game, by saying during one of the periods when the two of us were alone:

“Why don’t you make it easy on yourself? I keep telling ‘these Japs’ what you fellows know and what you don’t know. But they think they are so damn smart, they insist you do.”

“What do you mean, make it easy on myself?” I inquired.

“ ‘These Japs’ are going to question you, and question you again. So whatever you tell them, always stick to the same story. As long as you more or less pass the time of day with them, you will get along okay and lose nothing.”

“Thanks for the tip, Mac,” I said.

“Don’t call me Mac, call me Suyako,” he said, rather sternly, to impress me.

“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to simmer him down a bit.

By now, I was fully aware that I was no comic-strip hero, and I understood that I knew absolutely nothing of any military value that they probably didn’t know more about than I did. So I decided to stop playing Dick Tracy. I decided to be truthful in matters I wanted to tell them, so I could remember what I had said in the next question period.

Real late in the night a very elderly gentleman came in. I later found out that he was the commanding general of the entire Rabaul area, which at one time included all the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, New Ireland, New Britain, and what the Japanese held of New Guinea, so he was quite an important person. When he came in I noticed that the interpreter bowed about twelve times.

I was sitting on the chair with my injured leg crossed
over my good one, holding onto it with both hands. After the interpreter was through with his bowing spree, he turned around and slapped my injured leg off the other one. Scolding me, he said: “Don’t you know it is impolite to cross your legs in front of the commanding general?”

But I was in pain and kind of punchy, and I said: “God damn it, tell him my leg hurts like hell!”

So the interpreter turned around and went chop-chop-chop to this big boy, and the answer came back to the interpreter, who turned around to me and said: “The commanding general says if your leg hurts you can cross it.”

I answered: “Thank you,” nodded to the elderly gent, and crossed my leg and held onto it with both hands.

Now this old boy didn’t ask me questions like the underlings had done. He wanted to know who started the war. My answer was: “Why, you people, of course.”

He wanted to know where.

“Why, Pearl Harbor.”

Then he wanted to know what I thought of the Japanese people. Well, I was diplomatic enough to say that I personally didn’t have much against them, but then I went on at great length saying what I thought of their militaristic government, and what I thought of the atrocities I knew were committed in the Philippine Islands and in China.

The interpreter told me that the commanding general was about ready to leave but would like to tell me a fable and would I mind.

I answered: “Why, no, certainly not.”

So the commanding general told this fable, and as nearly as I can recall—for I was shot in the head and everything else, and was punchy, shot, and exhausted—the fable went like this:

“Once upon a time there was a little old lady and she traded with five merchants. She always paid her bills and got along fine. Finally the five merchants got together and they jacked up their prices so high the little old lady couldn’t afford to live any longer. That’s the end of the story.”

So, after having said this, the general bowed to me and went out of the room. I couldn’t help ponder that there just had to be two sides to everything, and I just couldn’t help admiring this distinguished old gent a little bit.

*   *   *

To show how one’s mind can become set on some idea, one of the first things I wanted to learn after being taken captive was the whereabouts or possible fate of Lieutenant Colonel “Indian Joe” Bauer.

Joe was a few years older than I was, and he always had been one of my idols. None of us ever believed the Japs could destroy a guy as great as Joe, but they had knocked him down off Guadalcanal before they got me, and Joe Foss had last seen him swimming in the water. Yet no word about him, or his last flight, had come to us, and we simply could not believe that Indian Joe was killed.

So after my last caller, the general, had left my first night’s interrogation, I asked Suyako if they had captured Colonel Bauer. After deliberating for some time he answered: “No, I’m certain we haven’t. Every prisoner has to come through Rabaul. This is our area headquarters.”

This Hawaiian-Japanese interpreter then suddenly turned on me, realizing that I had gotten some information from him.

“Say,” he demanded, “who the hell is doing this interrogating, me or you?”

He seemed to be so annoyed at what he had done that, to change the subject, I quietly asked for a cigarette in answer. The trick worked. But I would have liked to ask questions concerning members of my Black Sheep and their possible whereabouts.

Only two cigarettes were left in his package and he looked at me and scowled as he said: “I might as well. Where you are going you’re not going to need any more cigarettes.”

Of course I thought he knew what he was talking about. I thought I was going to be lobbed off the next day maybe. So with that I reached over and took out both cigarettes and said: “Well, in that case, I’ll just take them both.”

Suyako just looked at me, didn’t try to stop me or even ask for one back.

Early in the morning, still in the darkness, I was blindfolded again and put in the truck and driven some painful ten miles or so. I do not know where they took me. All those roads were so rough I just ached and pained in my wounds. Finally the truck stopped. I was taken out, the blindfold was removed, and there in front of me stood a swarthy-looking gent in a breechcloth and one of those funny little hats. He spoke
to me in pidgin English. “The boys call me Captain here. You tell me the whole story tomorrow.” At this point I was just so tired and exhausted that all I wanted, in addition to learning something, anything, about Joe and the others, was some sleep. And I kept thinking: “Oh God, I don’t give a damn if they shoot me, burn me at the stake, or anything else tomorrow. All I want for the rest of the night is some sleep.” I would have traded anything I knew in the world for sleep that minute. This shows how relative one’s values are to things you want in this world.

The captain was a Nip Navy chief, as I found out in later days. He took me to the door of a long cell block, rapped on the door, and said: “Roker, Roker.”

Soon a tall, rangy fellow with long hair and gaunt frame came to the door and said: “Yes, Captain, what is it?”

The captain said: “I got company for you, I got company for you.” The captain kept saying something to Crocker in half English and half Japanese, and I got the essence of what sounded like “No speako, no speako,” or something.

Of course, I didn’t quite get the idea, so I started to talk to Crocker. I knew he was one of the American pilots, and later found out that it was his white chute that I saw blossom out amid dark explosions on our first fight over Ballale. He had been transported to Rabaul by Nip destroyer.

But the next thing I knew the captain had clunked me over the side of my face and was literally foaming at the mouth.

Crocker said: “He means to say that you shouldn’t speak to anybody, not even me.”

I was taken down a long line of cells in this little building and was tossed on a kind of wooden crate affair; no blankets, nothing but a couple of gunny sacks.

This was to be my home for the next six weeks. The Japanese didn’t permit anybody to come near me, wash me or anything, for ten days. When infection set in my wounds, I began to smell like a dead horse. I smelled so horrible I couldn’t see how the guards could even stand to throw me in a truck to take me to the interrogating room each and every day.

Anyone in his right mind, not to mention a cartoonist, would think I could fall asleep, or just plain pass out from exhaustion, in what remained of my first night with the Nips,
but obviously, my mind wasn’t running along normal channels. And one would believe that I had sufficient trouble where I was at present to keep me occupied, but no, I was thinking of the base I had flown from. If only I could have a couple of those two-ounce bottles of brandy, then maybe I would be able to sleep in these two burlap bags and keep the mosquitoes from bothering me.

And Colonel Lard was worrying me, for I could see his ugly, smirking face as I closed my eyes in the darkness. Crime must pay off, after all, because Lard had certainly gotten the last laugh on me. Besides, he was losing no sleep where he was now located, protected by a veritable fortress.

I had counted upon his being inconvenienced when he was moved up to the forward area. But instead, he had made himself right at home as usual, for he had the troops fill sandbags and place them about the operations building, in which he lived. My guess is that this structure could have resisted anything but a direct hit from a two-thousand-pound-bomb. My imagination led me to believe that Lard had been taunting me, deliberately, when he had invited me to a cocktail party in his fortress not long before I was shot down.

There had been other squadron commanders invited to Lard’s party, but I considered it personal. I wouldn’t have known about anyone else, as I was probably the only one who consumed enough of his good whisky to get drunk. But if only I could have one minute to be in Lard’s quarters, just to take a couple of belts of his whisky, while he lay happily asleep.