No Ordinary Joes (47 page)

She brought this impertinence to her relationship with Bob. From the very beginning, they argued, often over his flirty ways with other women. She shared his fondness for alcohol, and she wasn’t afraid to start an argument. Bob’s usual way of coping was to head off to the nearest bar. Nevertheless, they married in 1948, and a year later, while stationed in Saipan, they had a son, Marty.

Like many POWs after the war, Bob filled out an affidavit detailing his imprisonment—prison conditions, torture, medical care, food, exercise, and Red Cross supplies—taking great care to provide an accurate account of his time in the four camps—Penang, Singapore, Ofuna, and Ashio—where he had been held. He made little effort to hide his hatred for his captors, and whenever possible he provided names or descriptions of the guards at each of the sites.

Bob’s affidavit would become part of the mountain of evidence compiled by the U.S. Investigative Group to assist in the prosecution of Japanese war criminals in what would become known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, which stretched from 1946 through 1948. He did not testify in person, although Captain Fitzgerald did, specifically regarding the brutality at Ofuna. Other POWs, among them Gordy Cox, had no desire to participate. The past was the past, and all they wanted to do was get on with their lives and not dredge up those painful memories.

In the end, 920 Japanese military personnel were executed, including officers responsible for ordering waterboarding and other excessive torture. Another 475 received life sentences, and another 2,944 drew prison time, with 1,018 being acquitted. Tojo, the prime minister and war minister, was executed, but General MacArthur ordered that Emperor Hirohito be exonerated. It was a decision second-guessed by many who believed it distorted the Japanese understanding of what it was to lose a war in which the country’s supreme commander went unpunished.

Bob was particularly interested in the sentences handed down to the thirty-three officers and enlisted men from Ofuna who were put on trial. Three officers received death sentences, one committed suicide; the rest were given prison sentences of various lengths.

In some small measure the war crimes trials and punishments they meted out helped Bob feel like his treatment had been avenged, but it did not erase the memory of all those horrible days and nights when he was convinced he was going to die. For that, alcohol was a better eraser. But even more than a case of beer, what helped him move forward with his life the most was his son, Marty.

The same wasn’t so true with his feelings about Jean. The first year of their marriage went well enough, but after that their relationship rapidly deteriorated. Bob was drinking and running around with other women, Jean was constantly yelling and screaming about his miscreant ways, each blaming the other for their behavior. They not only slept in separate beds, they moved into separate rooms. But they both felt a sense of obligation to stay married because of Marty.

As bad a husband as Bob was, he was as good a father, wrapping his life around Marty. He took him everywhere with him; he even welded a special seat for him into the backseat of his Navy-issued jeep.

Marty looked up to his dad, admiring the way he looked in his Navy uniform and the way he could fix just about anything. How many times did he hear Bob repeat his little mantra for getting things done: “Do it now while you’re thinking about it.” In the Philippines, Bob bought and rebuilt
an old sailing junk and took Marty sailing with him. He also bought and tinkered with motorcycles, and with Marty riding behind him, he loved to go for rides in the countryside. When Marty was old enough to drive a motorcycle, Bob always encouraged him to let out the throttle. To Marty, it seemed that everyone loved to be around his dad except his mother. Once, while Bob was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Jean woke Marty up in the middle of the night and brought him out on the front porch and pointed to his father passed out on the front lawn. “I want you to see what a drunk your father is,” she said. On Marty’s eighteenth birthday, Bob took him to a bar in the Philippines. After a few beers, Bob confessed that he hadn’t always been faithful to Jean, an admission that didn’t surprise Marty but one he still wished he hadn’t heard.

But the one thing Bob rarely talked about with his son was his experience in the war. Marty knew very little about what had happened to his father and didn’t ask. Bob made it clear that he believed that it had been his patriotic duty and honor to serve his country, no matter how badly it turned out for him.

Nor did Bob talk to Marty about Barbara.

Bob eventually became a chief warrant officer 4 (CWO-4), the highest rank below the commissioned officers. Primarily, he served on the office staffs of commanding officers throughout the Pacific; his duties included overseeing motor and boat pools, controlling correspondence throughout the staff, coordinating VIP tours, and maintaining personnel records. He consistently received high grades from his commanding officers.

With each new transfer or assignment, he checked the duty rosters and phone books looking for Barbara’s name. He knew that her husband was a Navy officer on track to become an admiral, and that she’d had two children, a boy and a girl. They both ended up stationed in Hawaii, where Bob was careful to avoid situations where they might run into each other. But once, after a night of heavy drinking, he drove to their house at 3:00 a.m. and parked across the street. He just sat behind the wheel, staring at the house, tears rolling down his cheeks. After an hour, he drove away.

Most of the time, he felt like he was just going through the motions, with no purpose to his life. Barbara was always a ghostly presence in his marriage. In the heat of an argument, he told Jean he would do anything to get back with Barbara and would never be happy without her. “I’d crawl back to her on my hands and knees if she’d take me,” he blurted out, effectively ending what little affection Jean had left for him. Still, they stayed together for Marty.

In 1967, Bob suffered a heart attack. He was convinced that it was related to the stress and physical toll his years as a POW had taken on him, but the Navy didn’t see the connection and refused to give him disability compensation. He soon retired and settled in San Mateo, south of San Francisco. Bob wasn’t bitter; he was immensely proud of his nearly thirty years of service and the stack of letters of commendation. Although he hadn’t gone to college or become a commissioned officer, he felt that the education and travel he’d experienced during his career had served him well.

With the war in Vietnam escalating rapidly, Marty enrolled at Sonoma State College and received a college deferment, but he flunked out after his first year and was immediately reclassified 1-A. To avoid getting drafted into the Army, he followed his dad’s advice and enlisted in the Navy, eventually volunteering for the Riverine Forces, a joint U.S. Army and U.S. Navy force that helped transport troops and saw combat in the Mekong Delta. The boats often came under heavy fire from Vietcong units dug in behind trees and foliage along the riverbanks that ran through the delta. For Marty, being part of such a dangerous assignment was a way to show his dad that he was every bit as brave and tough.

Marty survived his tour of duty, but like many returning Vietnam vets, he struggled with reentry into civilian society, falling into the grips of dope, including heroin, and a deep depression. Bob struggled to understand, and he and his son began to drift apart, the closeness they shared during Marty’s childhood giving way to an uneasy tension. Bob suspected Marty of stealing from him; Marty believed that Bob was not sympathetic to the
difficulties he was experiencing in readjusting after Vietnam. In one heated argument, he blamed Bob for his problems.

In 1970, Bob’s marriage to Jean finally disintegrated. He packed his few belongings, took their two small dogs, and moved back to southern Oregon where he’d grown up, renting a single-wide mobile home in the hills west of Jacksonville near Medford. He got by on his Navy pension and small savings. He dabbled with the idea of writing a book about his POW experience, but whenever he sat down to work on the project, he was overwhelmed with the enormity of the task and soon abandoned the idea. Mostly, he drank beer and did nothing. He rarely talked to Marty. Even the task of taking care of the two dogs seemed too much to handle, and he returned them to Jean in California.

It was January 1971 and Bob was sitting in the living room of his mobile home, trying to get a fix on how to spend the day, when the phone rang.

“This is Barbara,” the voice on the other end said.

“Who?” he responded.

“Barbara Kunhardt. You know, Barbara Koehler. Barbara Palmer. Your ex-wife.”

Bob hesitated, trying to match the voice with the memories. “Is this somebody playing a joke?” he asked.

“No, it’s really me,” she said.

She had come home to visit her mom, who was recuperating in the hospital following surgery, and her father had told her where Bob was living.

“God, it’s great to hear your voice,” he said. “How’ya doing?”

Barbara told him that she was still married to Kunhardt, who had retired from the Navy in 1966 and now worked as a consultant for the government. She had two children in their early twenties and lived in a large house in McLean, Virginia, an upscale suburb near Washington, D.C. She and Kunhardt liked to entertain and go sailing on his yacht.

Bob and Barbara talked nonstop for two hours, both admitting that
they had regularly checked the duty rosters in search of the other’s name at each new assignment. “It’d sure be nice to see you,” Bob finally offered.

They agreed to “accidentally” bump into each other the next day at a market in Central Point.

What Barbara didn’t mention in their conversation was that she’d made the decision to call Bob (her courage bolstered by a couple of stiff drinks) after her husband had called to demand that she cut short her visit with her parents and come back home “where you belong.” He ended the conversation by hanging up on her.

The reality was that Barbara’s marriage had not been a happy one for years. Robert Kunhardt, as Barbara had learned soon after they were married, was not an easy man to live with. He had a notoriously short fuse and kept a tight rein on her and the children. A gun collector, he kept five loaded pistols and eight shotguns in the house. He demanded his dinner be served every night precisely at 1800 sharp (6:00 p.m.) and often graded Barbara on the quality of the meal, or their sex. They took family vacations every year at the same time and to the same place—to visit his parents in Connecticut. He kept her on a tight budget and had to approve of every expense. At one point, their daughter, Lynn, told him to “stop trying to run the family as if you’re commanding a ship.”

His naval career had not gone the way he’d hoped. After rising to the rank of commander, he was passed over for promotion to captain and the admiralship he’d wanted. He alternately blamed it on being discriminated against because he was short or because he’d married an enlisted man’s wife. He’d always been a big drinker, but after being passed over, he began drinking even more heavily. Barbara usually kept pace.

He was a strict and controlling parent, rarely showing affection to his two children. He hand-selected the classes Lynn took in high school so that she could qualify for Annapolis. He repeatedly told his son, Bobby, that he was worthless and a loser and beat him with a belt.

Kunhardt’s drinking had gotten so bad that one of his friends advised Barbara that if she was to have any chance of saving the marriage, she
needed to lock the liquor cabinet. There was a part of her that was afraid of him and wanted to leave, but over the years she’d grown comfortable in their material world. She liked her big diamond ring. She remained faithful in the marriage.

Lynn heard Kunhardt’s tirade ordering Barbara to return from Oregon. “It would serve you right if she never came home,” she said.

At the market the next day, Bob had a six-pack of beer in his shopping basket when he came around the aisle and spotted Barbara. As he approached, tears filled his eyes. “Oh, my God, you’re as beautiful as ever,” he said.

“You look pretty darn good yourself,” she replied.

Their old chemistry was instantly ignited. They got into Bob’s pickup and started south on I-5, past Medford and Ashland, and up into the Siskiyous toward Mount Ashland. It was the same route they’d taken the day they first saw each other after Bob’s return from the war. To Barbara, on that day Bob had been a shadow of the man she’d married. Now he was robust and full of life, barely able to stop talking or casting lustful sidelong glances in her direction.

They turned around and headed back north. In his bed in his single-wide, they made love for five hours.

The next three days were a whirlwind of sex, reminiscing, and feelings of guilt. Every evening Robert Kunhardt called and demanded that Barbara come home, and every time she told him she couldn’t leave until her mother was better. She even took Bob to visit her mom in the hospital. When her father learned that she’d seen Bob, he was disapproving, just as he’d been back when they dated in high school.

“See where you’d be if you’d ended up with him?” he demanded. “You’d be living in a trailer. What kind of life would that be?”

As the time neared for Barbara to head back home to Virginia, she and Bob agonized over what to do next. As intense as the sparks had been, she wasn’t ready to leave her marriage. “Maybe we can just have a long-distance love affair,” she suggested.

“I want more,” Bob insisted.

He remembered when they went to Reno in 1945 to get a divorce and ended up making love all night long, only to have Barbara dash his hopes of getting back together. But this time it felt as if renewing their relationship might be possible. She’d told Bob how unhappy she was in her marriage, and that she’d never loved her husband with the same passion and intensity that she’d loved him.

For Bob, being with Barbara again had been the best thing that had happened to him since their wedding day back in 1941. All the years that had intervened had done nothing to diminish his passion or desire to be with her. It was as if he’d just been treading water while she was away, treading water for twenty-five years.