Goodbye, Darkness (56 page)
Sugar Loaf, then and now
You also needed nationalism, the absolute conviction that the United States was the envy of all other nations, a country which had never done anything infamous, in which nothing was insuperable, whose ingenuity could solve anything by inventing something. You felt sure that all lands, given our democracy and our know-how, could shine as radiantly as we did. Esteem was personal, too; you assumed that if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity, respected as well as adored by your children. Wickedness was attributed to flaws in individual characters, not to society's shortcomings. To accept unemployment compensation, had it existed, would have been considered humiliating. So would committing a senile aunt to a state mental hospital. Instead, she was kept in the back bedroom, still a member of the family.
Debt was ignoble. Courage was a virtue. Mothers were beloved, fathers obeyed. Marriage was a sacrament. Divorce was disgraceful. Pregnancy meant expulsion from school or dismissal from a job. The boys responsible for the crimes of impregnation had to marry the girls. Couples did not keep house before they were married and there could be no wedding until the girl's father had approved. You assumed that gentlemen always stood and removed their hats when a woman entered a room. The suggestion that some of them might resent being called “ladies” would have confounded you. You needed a precise relationship between the sexes, so that no one questioned the duty of boys to cross the seas and fight while girls wrote them cheerful letters from home, girls you knew were still pure because they had let you touch them here but not there, explaining that they were saving themselves for marriage. All these and “God Bless America” and Christmas or Hanukkah and the certitude that victory in the war would assure their continuance into perpetuity — all this led you into battle, and sustained you as you fought, and comforted you if you fell, and, if it came to that, justified your death to all who loved you as you had loved them.
The author in 1979
Later the rules would change. But we didn't know that then. We didn't
know.
My last war dream came to me in Hong Kong's Ambassador Hotel, in a room overlooking the intersection of Nathan and Middle streets. The dream began in a red blur, like a film completely out of focus, so much so that I didn't have the faintest idea of what I would see. Clarity came slowly. First: broad daylight, for the first time in these dreams. Second: the hill. No mystery about that now; it was Sugar Loaf down to the last dimple. The old man appeared on the right and began his weary ascent. But there was no figure rising on the left to greet him, though he didn't know that until, breathing heavily, he reached the summit and peered down the reverse slope. He saw nothing, heard nothing. There was nothing to see or hear. He waited, shifting slightly this way and that with the passive patience of the middle-aged. A cloud passed overhead, darkening the hill. Then the old man grasped what had happened. Embers would never again glow in the ashes of his memory. His Sergeant would never come again. He turned away, blinded by tears.
T
HIS BOOK IS LARGELY A MARINE'S MEMOIR, NOT A BALANCED HIS
tory of the war with Japan. Those who want versions of air and naval engagements during the conflict must look elsewhere; descriptions of Douglas MacArthur's campaigns, for example, may be found in
American Caesar,
my biography of the general.
That is the first breath. The second, which must quickly follow, is that my reminiscences are not chronological. Any attempt to impose structure upon the chaos of personal history, with the intent of attracting and holding the reader, necessarily involves some distortion. It may be as great as a Mercator projection's — for instance, Daniel Defoe's
Journal of the Plague Year,
a riveting account of a disaster which struck when the writer was five years old — or as slight as H. L. Mencken's genial caveat that his autobiography was “yarning” and “not always photographically precise,” that “there are no doubt some stretchers in this book,” though “mainly it is fact.”
So here too. After thirty-five years, any man who suffered a head wound (my medical discharge papers note that, among other things, I had sustained “traumatic lesions of the brain”) can never be absolutely sure of his memory. But everything I have set down happened, and to the best of my recollection it happened just this way, except that I have changed names to respect the privacy of other men and their families. But I have resorted to some legerdemain in the interests of re-creating, and clarifying the spirit of, the historical past. Here and there I use the pronoun “we” in its all-inclusive sense, as in “We won the war.” More specifically, although I enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after Pearl Harbor, I was ordered back to college until called up. Thus, although I spent seven months on Guadalcanal, I arrived after the Japanese hegira and saw no fighting there. No infantryman fought on all, or even many, of the Pacific islands. Deployment of troops, casualty figures, and tropical diseases laid down impossible odds against that. My own combat experience occurred on Okinawa, where I fought for over two months, during which I was wounded twice, was ordered off the line once, and was ultimately carried off the island and evacuated to Saipan. I have drawn from that bank of experience for flash-forwards in earlier chapters, introducing each episode at a point where it seems fitting. Writing them was extremely difficult. My feelings about the Marine Corps are still highly ambivalent, tinged with sadness and bitterness, yet with the first enchantment lingering. But by mining that tough old ore, and altering the order of those personal events, I have, I believe, been able to present a sequential account of a war which still confuses most Americans.
This, then, was the life I knew, where death sought me, during which I was transformed from a cheeky youth to a troubled man who, for over thirty years, repressed what he could not bear to remember.
Expressing gratitude to those who helped me along the way during this long journey into the past is an occasion for both pleasure and frustration — pleasure, because my memories of their kindnesses are still warm, and frustration, because my appreciation can never be adequate. I hope I have omitted no one. It is possible. Jungles are poor places to keep files. If I thus err in omission, I trust I shall be forgiven. Forgiveness is also asked for my failure to identify individuals by their military, diplomatic, civilian, tribal, and ecclesiastical titles. Generals are here, and monsignors, and ambassadors — all in different hierarchies, so varied and often so defiant of classification that I have resorted to that weak crutch, the alphabet. I honor each source; I thank each; I am deeply indebted to all; and I believe that they will share my doubt that rank will count for much when we cross that dark river to the far shore where all voyages end and all paths meet.
My Samaritans, then, were: Jonathan F. Abel, Aguedo F. Agbayani, Consul Alberto, C. W. Allison, Norman Anderson, John A. Baker, Itaaka Bamiatoa, Kabataan Barangay, Carmelo Barbero, Susan Bardelosa, Ieuan Batten, Bill Bennett, Homer Bigart, Al Bonney, Baltazar Jerome Bordallo, Madeleine M. Bordallo, Ricardo J. Bordallo, Robert L. Bowen, Edward R. Brady, Margaret A. Brewer, Paul H. Brown, Stanley Brown, Robert Byck, George Cakobau, Oscar Calvo, Carlos S. Camacho, Anthony Charlwood, Donald Chung, Martin Clemens, Andrew W. Coffey, Jeremiah Collins, John P. Condon, Paul Cox, Elfriede Craddock, Jerry Crad-dock, R. Don Crider, Horace Dawson, Beth Day, Judy Day, John deYoung, Rodolfo L. Diaz, Mack R. Douglas, R. E. Duca, Rodolfo Dula, Jim Earl, Florence Fenton, Y. Fujumura, Robert B. Fowler, Jay Gildner, John R. Griffith, Samuel B. Griffith II, John Guise, James Gunther, Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., Ernest S. Hildebrand, Jr., Frank W. Ingraham, Osi Ivaroa, Sy Ivice, Emilie Johnson, Robert Jordan, Timothy Joyner, Bruce Kirkwood, Jackson Koria, Isirfli Korovula, Joiji Kotobalavu, Maura Leavy, Har-land Lee, Theodore Lidz, Chester A. Lipa, Arthur C. Livick, Jr., Ichiro Loitang, Haldon Ray Loomis, Fijito Oshikawa, Howard Mabie, P. D. MacDonald, Luis G. Magbanua, Pio Manoa, P. F. Manueli, Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, Ann Marshall, Tim Mauldin, Alan Meissner, Mike Mennard, Ross Milloy, Robert Milne, Arnold Milton, Yoshida Mitsui, Ben Moide, George E. Murphy, Satendra Nandan, Beretitaro Neeti, Dave Ngirmidol, Praxiteles C. Nicholson, Homer Noble, Myron Nordquist, Russell E. Olson, Jeremiah J. O'Neil, Noah Onglunge, Hera Owen, Robert Owen, Ted Oxburrow, Katsy Parsons, Lester E. Penney, Harry W. Peterson, Jr., Raymond Pillai, Eugene Ramsey, Asasela Ravuvu, John E. Reece, Garth Rees, Thomas Remengesaw, Carlos Romulo, Tessie Romulo, Pedro C. Sanchez, Frank Santo, Frans Schutzman, Tom Scott, Charles S. Shapiro, Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., George Silk, Harry Simes, E. H. Simmons, Gus Smales, Kalista Smau, Hinao Soalablai, Kerrie Somosi, Robert Somosi, Laura M. Souder, Patrick Spread, Taute Takanoi, Jay Taylor, John Terrance, Ian Thompson, Joe Tooker, Jean Trumbull, Robert Trumbull, Fred Turner, Richard Underwood, Mae Verave, Mariano C. Kersosa, Jacob Vouza, Mike Ward, R. J. Wenzei, Roger L. Williams, William Wilson, Adrian P. Winkel, Anne Wray, and Stanton F. Zoglin.
Although this tale is personal, certain books were useful in the telling of it and are recommended to those interested in reading more about the battlefields it cites. These are
Rust in Peace,
by Bruce Adams (Sydney, 1975);
The Pacific: Then and Now,
by Bruce Bahrenburg (New York, 1971);
A Complete History of Guam,
by Paul Carano and Pedro C. Sanchez (Rutland, Vermont, 1964);
History of the Sixth Marine Division,
by Bevan Cass (Washington, 1948);
The Battle for Guadalcanal,
a superb account of that struggle, by Samuel B. Griffith II (Philadelphia, 1963);
History of the Second World War,
by B. H. Lidell Hart (New York, 1971);
Soldiers of the Sea,
a history of the Marine Corps, by Robert Debs Heinl, Jr. (Annapolis, 1962);
The Long and the Short and the Tall,
by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. (New York, 1946);
The Old Breed,
a history of the First Marine Division in World War II, by George McMillan (Washington, 1949);
The Fatal Impact,
by Alan Moorehead (Middlesex, England, 1966);
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II,
volumes III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, XIII, XIV, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Boston, 1948, 1949, 1949, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1959, 1960);
Untangled New Guinea Pidgin,
by Wesley Sadler (Madang, Papua New Guinea, 1973);
Tin Roofs and Palm Trees,
by Robert Trumbull (Seattle, 1977);
The Pacific Way,
edited by Sione Tupouniua, et al. (Suva, Fiji, 1975);
Tarawa,
by Robert Sherrod (New York, 1944);
World War II: Island Fighting,
by Rafael Steinberg and the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, Virginia, 1978); and
World War II: The Rising Sun,
by Arthur Zich and the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, Virginia, 1977).
Readers of Sean O'Casey's
Juno and the Paycock
may find the second italicized sentence on page 391 familiar. It is a paraphrase of two sentences appearing in different acts of that splendid play.
In this, as in previous books, the author is profoundly grateful to the staff of Wesleyan University's Olin Library, and in particular to J. Robert Adams, University Librarian, and William Dillon, Suzanne H. Fall, Peg Halstead, Alice Henry, Joan Jurale, Erhard Konerding, Steven Lebergott, Edmund Rubacha, and Elizabeth Swaim, for their generous help, thoughtfulness, and understanding. Once more my invaluable assistant, Margaret Kennedy Rider, has proved to be loyal, tireless, and understanding. And I am again indebted to Don Congdon, my literary agent; Roger Donald, my editor; and Melissa Clemence, my copy editor — three peerless professionals whose patience and counsel never failed, never flagged, and who saw to it that everything attainable was attained.
W.M.
Wesleyan University
May
1980
Look for these other books by
William Manchester
A World Lit Only by Fire
The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance
“Lively and engaging, full of exquisite details and anecdotes that transform this period — usually murky — into comprehensive tableau.”
— Dallas Morning News
“Manchester persuasively argues that the Middle Ages ended September 7, 1552, the day that a few surviving members of Ferdinand Magellan's crew returned to Spain, having circumnavigated the earth. By taking readers along on Magellan's voyage, Manchester provides them with easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born.”
— Chicago Tribune
