No Ordinary Joes (33 page)

“What’ya got today?” asked Bob.

It was a cheese pie, explained Keller, handing Bob the recipe.

Bob finished reading the recipe. “I’ll take two,” he said.

Bob sat on the edge of his bunk, trying to finish the scripted postcard to Barbara. Since arriving at Ashio, he and the other crew members had been registered as prisoners of war. On a couple of occasions, they’d been allowed to share a Red Cross parcel; they were also allowed to send a card home once a month. Bob had written faithfully, but he had no idea if the cards had been sent. A few of the men had received letters from home, but he’d received nothing from Barbara.

Today he was having trouble focusing. Maybe it was the cold. The previous day the guards had made him and the other prisoners stand out in the snow, naked, for seven hours, making him wonder if the guards weren’t sexually perverted. Or maybe he was depressed, finally going over to the dark side. For the past couple of months, he’d felt his mind slipping almost as much as his body. Every morning he woke up and wanted to just play dead, no thoughts, no anything. The idea of working another day in the smelter was almost too much to bear. His beriberi had gotten worse, and his legs were so swollen that every step felt like all the capillaries in his body would explode. Life had become an endless crawl through a fog. He’d thought about going to the Death Hut and just letting himself die with as much dignity as possible. But then he thought about Barbara, and he willed himself to survive the day, and the next one, and the one after that.

But on this day, he was too weak to finish his letter or even think about another slice of cheese pie.

Tim McCoy, just before he got kicked off the
Trout
. (
Photo Credit i1
)

Bob Palmer—those eyes, sky blue and friendly, reminded Barbara of why she’d first let him sweet-talk her into the backseat of her father’s car. (
Photo Credit i2
)

“Growing up, I went to bed hungry lots of nights,” Chuck Vervalin said. “Joining the Navy gave me three square meals and a regular paycheck.” (
Photo Credit i3
)

When Gordy Cox’s mom realized he wasn’t going to graduate from Yakima High, she gave him permission to join the Navy. He was seventeen. (
Photo Credit i4
)

Barbara Palmer on her wedding day in 1941. (
Photo Credit i5
)

“Our wedding night is a trauma I don’t think I ever got over,” Gwen Vervalin said. (
Photo Credit i6
)

Gordy and Weasel. (
Photo Credit i7
)

Gordy watched the
Grenadier
(pictured here on its inaugural cruise), his home, the place where he ate and slept, vanish beneath the ocean surface in stunning silence. (
Photo Credit i8
)

“The Convent on Light Street was such a beautiful place,” Chuck Vervalin said. “It’s hard to fathom that so much evil took place there.” (
Photo Credit i9
)

The POWs who were too sick to trudge off to labor at the steel mill stayed behind in their barracks at Fukuoka prison camp. (
Photo Credit i10
)