Dragon of the Mangrooves (6 page)

Tomita snapped, “You moron! Look around you!”

Kasuga looked around the battlefield. Soldiers at the left line were furiously packing equipment into their knapsacks, their faces stiff with fear. They were obviously preparing to retreat. Then he turned back and noticed some distant dead grass rustling unnaturally. Apparently some had already started pulling back in the wasteland. He looked further, only to see that the right wing nearer to the enemy front had emptied. He was astounded and looked up at Tomita.

Tomita said, “Now, listen! Those guys don’t have any armor-piercing mines. How do we cope with a damned tank? Tanks will aim at our machine gun first!”

“Kasu, do as you’re told right now, or the shells will come! I don’t want to do a banzai charge. Not in such a dismal place!” Hirono also hurried him. He had already begun pushing the rear carrying handle of the gun. There was no more time to think about options, orders, or strategy. Kasuga held the front handle of the tripod. Crawling, the four gunners managed to move the gun into the dead grass, out of sight. Everyone dropped back. But the bulk and weight of the machine gun hampered them. Crawling on wasteland made progress difficult.

Suddenly Kasuga noticed that all the riflemen around them had gone.

A tank gun was terrifying, for sure. But it was even more terrifying that he had been left behind in the middle of the front line. Kasuga was worried that at any moment an enemy soldier might break through the dead grass with a bayonet-attached rifle in his hands and charge at him. Everyone crawled without a saying a word. Finally Tomita broke the silence. “OK, boys, it seems safe now. Change to four-man conveyance.”

Members timidly stood up by ones and twos. They saw some windmill palms standing along the defile through dead grass. They remembered them well. It was the very place where the stocky NCO had spoken to them. Hill 353 wasn’t far from there.

Kasuga held the tripod with the other three gunners. Shouting together in a harmony, they lifted it up on their shoulders like a mikoshi, the portable shrine of their homeland. When Kasuga braced himself to resist its weight, a howling sound rang out. It was the whiz of a rushing cannonball ripping the air.

He cast a hasty glance backward, and he saw what looked like a high-explosive shell, discharged by an enemy tank gun, exploding on the far bank with a tremendous roar. It was exactly where Tomita Squad had positioned the machine gun before moving it. All were transfixed at the sight. More shells burst there in a row before their eyes. The dry field caught fire at once. Bright flames rose into the sky. Its color was dark and deep, and Kasuga didn’t know the sunset until he saw it.

When Second Lieutenant Yoshihisa Sumi woke up, dusk had fallen. He hurriedly propped himself up. First Class Private Takahashi came into the cell, just as he had ordered.

“We’re all ready for departure, Lieutenant. We’d like to ask for your advice,” said Takahashi.

“How are the boats?”

“We got them, and they’re moored at the mouth of the Taungup River. The party is also assembling there now.”

Sumi leaped to his feet and snatched his sword and the Nambu fourteen pistol from the bedside.

“Take me to the place quickly!”

When the two came out of the old temple, clouds in the western sky were dyed in blazing orange. Night was just around the corner, causing Sumi to fret.

Kicking up dust, the two ran along the dry coast road, dented badly by oxcarts. They came down a grassy knoll facing the river mouth and cleared a small bank. Then a rather wretched settlement burst into view. It was the town of Taungup. Every house facing the water had a raised foundation, built above the surface.

As Takahashi had said, all the members of the group were standing together in an open space where local bazaars sometimes took place. Sergeant Kokichi Shimizu confirmed their arrival and commanded all to fall in line in a perfunc-tory manner. Sumi called Superior Private Yoshioka and Pondgi.

“How many boats did you get?”

“Five, sir. We also got a Burmese steersman for each,” answered Yoshioka.

“Good! Take me to where they are.”

Following the two, he passed through meandering alleys between many scruffy private houses and reached the waterfront.

The five boats were moored at a floating bridge installed to connect several elevated houses. All were rather crude sportfishing boats with no special equipment. Each hull was small, and the loading capacity was limited to about twenty men for each. However hard it would be, the soldiers would have to pack themselves in like baggage. Sumi also noticed that all five were very ragged and old.

Almost all the paint had long since worn off. And the diesel engines were no more than patchy conversions from British secondhand trucks.

Sumi was disappointed.

Pondgi said nonchalantly with a carefree smile, “Master Sumi, are you worried because the ships are old? They are surely old, but they are well maintained. The engines are powerful, and the steersmen are trained, the same as Japanese soldiers. They know the Burmese seas, and they go everywhere.”

Sumi forced a smile and then thanked them for their efforts. “Well done. You did a good job in this short time. I’m pleased to get such nice boats.” It wasn’t a dig. Nothing was more important than a fast departure.

Sumi returned to the open space and heard Shimizu report that his men had completed all preparations: provisions, arms, ammunition, medical supplies, Burmese attire for disguise, and so forth. Everything was ready. They said Second Lieutenant Kakegawa, Sumi’s sidekick from the same reserve officer candidate school, had come from the 121st Infantry Regiment HQ and even taught them how to use the Sten gun. Due to deficiencies in nine-millimeter pistol cartridges, live firing exercises had been short, but every tankette gunner had learned it.

Sumi was delighted at the news, to say nothing of Kakegawa’s favor.

Also, two signalmen with a type five transmitter-receiver had come from Tankette Fifth Company HQ to join them, thanks to Captain Yoda’s generosity. In addition, Pondgi introduced a thin Burmese to Sumi. His name was Manboy.

Manboy said he knew the Heywood Channel well and would like to pilot them.

Sumi approved without reluctance.

However, they had ended up with a big group of sixteen: one commander, one vice-commander, twelve rank-and-files including two signalmen, and two Burmese. Considering they must take in garrison soldiers on their way back, he saw the number as too big. Sumi remembered Takahashi, his batman, was an only son and the heir of a farmhouse. He took off his sword silently and handed it over to Takahashi. “When you go back to the unit, put this in my trunk.”

Takahashi realized that his commander was leaving him behind. “Please, take me with you, Lieutenant,” Takahashi pleaded in an almost tearful voice. Sumi shook his head dryly. If Takahashi should get killed, the line of his family would die out.

“No. This duty is too tough for a greenhorn like you. And listen, everybody. A long-distance march is ahead of us. We don’t need the old holding us up.” Sumi picked two elder draftees among them. Each of them managed a household.

“You’d better leave the party. From now, you are under the command of First Squad. Right?”

All three said they wanted to go, but Sumi didn’t listen to their protests. He knew full well they were delighted to escape from a dangerous duty. Still, they had to make it seem as though they were disappointed. It was the etiquette of the armed forces.

Shimizu suggested that Sumi carry a sword, but Sumi turned a deaf ear to his advice. Every Japanese officer obtained a sword at his own expense and boastfully dangled it from a belt. Even a Navy admiral carried a sword as a matter of course, the dress code required it. Sumi didn’t like that and even thought it absurd. He could never understand why the Navy, whose battles were centered on operating machines, needed swords. Anyway, a Japanese sword was unfit for a Burmese disguise.

He clasped his leather belt again. With his ancestral sword detached, it was much lighter now, which also lightened his mind somewhat. Even if he were to die on the foreign island, his family’s precious sword could return home and not fall into enemy hands.

Everything was ready. He looked over the faces of his crew. “I’m going to report to the company commander. As soon as I’m back, we’ll move out. Change clothes and wait for me at the floating bridge.”

The sun had set, and the dark water of the Taungup River flowed quietly.

When Sumi arrived at the 121st Infantry Regiment HQ, Captain Yoda wasn’t there, unfortunately. But it was soon arranged that Colonel Nagashima, the 121st Infantry Regiment commander, would meet with him to get a report instead. An orderly guided Sumi to a shack, which seemed like his office. There he found a map of Ramree Island pinned up on a wall. It was a detailed one, drawn on a scale of one to fifty thousand. Many signs and arrows, standing for the courses of both armies, were scribbled on it in colored pencil. The complexity of interwoven red and blue lines showed the agony of a commander who had gotten by in difficult situations.

A few minutes later, Colonel Nagashima came into the shack. He was a tall man who wore glasses and had a gentle look. A flame of a taper on an old writing desk reflected on his lenses.

After listening to Sumi’s report, Nagashima said calmly, “The garrison has often offered opinions. Their main intention is defending the island to the death by guerilla wars. But I don’t want to let them do it. Here we made every effort to minimize the death toll. The garrison commander will carry out the creek-crossing operation on the night of the eighteenth, the day after tomorrow. I have already requested the Fifth Air Division to dispatch aircraft that day.

Although enemies are swarming around in the sea and on land, I want you to make it out with the garrison and save as many of them as possible.”

He continued, “To tell you the truth, I’m sorry to force such a duty on an officer like you, however supreme the division order may be.”

Concerned for Sumi, Nagashima gave him three packs of cigarettes.

After leaving the HQ, Sumi reflected on Colonel Nagashima’s words under twinkling stars. He thought it was lucky for Ramree Garrison to have such a commander. The fate of every soldier rested on his commander. In those days, many friendly garrisons had been wiped out after resisting until death in Pacific solitary islands like Attu or Leyte. Even soldiers in Burma circulated rumors about those terrible scenes and feared they might follow the same fate.

Ramree, in fact, wasn’t a solitary island like those on the Pacific Ocean. It was closer to a holm or a bottomland, rather than an island. But it made no difference either way. Removed from the main force by the steep mountains of Arakan and the countless creeks, it was the same isolated front line.

The agony of the garrison was much the same. No matter how ridiculous the order to swim across a sea full of enemies might be, being part of a rescue would be much better than being annihilated helplessly. Sumi couldn’t deny that he had received a significant duty in the very battlefield where destruction and massacres were everyday affairs.

“Listen, men! Our destination is Ramree Island. We head there to help Second Battalion of the 121st Infantry Regiment evacuate to the mainland!”

Sumi loudly briefed members of the rescue party standing in a row. Everyone had disguised himself as a Burmese, putting on a white shirt and wrapping around a lungi, the tubular loincloth that was part of Burmese clothing culture.

Their faces were well tanned, and only their eyes gave away their hesitation. With Sten guns under their arms, they gave an impression of statelessness rather than Burmese.

“Let’s go soon, Lieutenant. If we’re strolling around in these latest fashions, we’ll get shot by our comrades,” said Yoshioka.

Indeed he was right. Now the honorable Imperial Army soldiers couldn’t take on a rescue action without a wacky disguise.

Sumi was astonished to learn from one of the steersmen that many British-Indian troops had gathered up near the Cape of Amou, the intended landing point, a few days before. Sumi knew an enemy of two-battalion strength had landed the cape on January 30, but he also heard it had advanced further inland without constructing any beachheads there. The steersman reported that the troops had been leveling off an open area near a neighboring village named Kyauknimaw, to which Sumi let out a groan. “They’re making an airfield.”

It was too dangerous to plunge into an airfield where the enemy must certainly be on the alert. Sumi’s initial plan to break through the east coast at a stretch from the Cape of Amou to Yanthitgyi, the shortest course to be taken, was now useless. He hadn’t prepared any other landing points. However, Manboy assured him that Uga had sound piers. Uga was a small village southwest, facing the Cheduba Strait. Sumi changed his plan and chose Uga. As a matter of course, the enemy might have already occupied there. He couldn’t deny that possibility but had no other option. He chose Uga partially out of despair.

Crew members piled into the boats, and the steersmen started the engines.