First Into Nagasaki (13 page)

Of Camp #17’s total roster of about 1,700 men (including 700 Americans), approximately 500 have made their way to the American airfield at Kanoya in small roving parties—about 300 of these being American and almost all the remainder Australian.

Omuta, Japan—Saturday, September 15, 1945 0900 hours

Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu

Among 420 Aussies who marched to a train today from the horror camp of a Mitsui coal mine was one who had to be borne on piggyback by a willing comrade. It was Private David Ernest Runge of Miwillahbah, Queensland, and he could not walk because both legs had been amputated just below the knees on March 3rd by Captain Thomas Hewlett, a U.S. physician prisoner captured on Bataan.

Five Americans and one Aussie have been put to death by the Japanese here, and many Americans permanently mutilated by beatings from Mitsui’s overmen and soldiers. But by common consent among 1,700 Dutch, English, Australian and American prisoners at this camp, Runge’s case is the sheerest example of deliberate Japanese cruelty short of executions without trial.

Runge, captured at Singapore, was “an old Aussie,” which means he arrived at the Mitsui camp and entered the coal mine in June 1944, joining the Bataan and Corregidor Americans who had already been toiling for nearly a year underground. By February 1945 Runge was instructing “new Aussies” in the use of a jackhammer. He was showing F. R. Willis and Robert Tideswell how to chip rock, the whole party being under an overman named Katu-san, when three cars carrying coal ran off the rails, causing Katu-san’s temper to do likewise. Saying “Dummy dummy, that’s no good,” the Japanese promised that he would report Runge for
haitis savis,
meaning “military gifts”—that is, a beating.

Guards waiting for Runge at the mine’s shafthead hustled him to the
aeso.
Five soldiers beat him with fists and heavy timbers, then muscled him to the camp guardhouse a half mile away. Runge and his two students remained ignorant of what the charge was, if any.

The day was bitter cold with sleet, and Runge wore cotton pants, a shirt, an overcoat and cracked Japanese-style rubber shoes which fell from his feet as he obeyed the guards’ first command: that he kneel on bamboo.

Runge’s sworn affadavit says, “From four in the afternoon until noon the next day I was kept kneeling in this position with twelve rests of fifteen minutes each, standing at attention.” He was allowed his first sleep from the following midnight until four in the morning of February 14th, two days after his arrest.

From four in the morning Runge was stood at attention all day in the freezing guardhouse, barefoot. His feet were already swollen so large that he would have been unable to replace his sneakers even if allowed. On the 16th and 17th he was also stood continuously at attention, barefoot, from four in the morning until nine at night.

From the first day of Runge’s arrest the Australian commanding officer, Motor Transport Lieutenant Percival Howell, visited twice daily the camp commandant, Captain Fukuhara, and explained to him Runge’s increasingly grave condition. Runge’s feet were turning black and blue, and for the first three days he went foodless. Finally on the 17th he was no longer able to hold himself upright. Runge was then compelled to sign a form determined by Captain Fukuhara which was standard. The statement said that Runge must expect severer treatment if sent to the
aeso
again and that he must obey all orders by any Japanese, whether civilian or military.

Carried to the hospital by two American comrades, Runge underwent treatment by Dr. Hewlett and Captain Ian Duncan. After a week his feet were still numb and his toes cadaveric. In three weeks his toes began dropping off and gangrene was spreading. On the morning of March 9th Howell visited the young ex–banana plantation worker and told him that his feet must go.

That’s why Davey Runge was carried instead of walking today as he departed for Nagasaki, where the American hospital ship
Haven
has a bed waiting for him.

“T
HE
J
APANESE
W
AS A
S
TRANGE
J
AILER
”

Allied Prison Camp #17, Omuta, Kyushu

Though nobody cares much what the Japanese think about any more, the processes of the Japanese mind are still a cause of wonderment to those who were their prisoners. These men have the advantage, if it can be called that, of having known the Japanese both before and after surrender. They believe, many of them, that the Japanese are a bit crazy. The prisoners do not exclude the possibility they may have become crazy too, by association. But the Japanese seem to have been a little more so.

In Java, the prison enclosure at Bandoeng had two sets of captives: 5,000 men, Allied military, and 1,200 ducks, Javanese. By a system of ruses the Allied prisoners, who were always hungry, found a way of stealing the eggs laid in captivity by their fellow prisoners. Egg production went down 50%. The commandant blamed the ducks. He studied their lives and reached the conclusion that they were dissolute and frivolous. One day he ordered all the ducks to be driven off their ponds and arranged before him in as orderly a fashion as frightened ducks could be. Then, roaring at the top of his voice, he delivered them a lecture.

“Your egg production is down, do you understand?” he shouted. “And why has it fallen? It is not for lack of food. Do not tell me you are starving. You eat well. But you are not like Japanese ducks. You are lazy. You simply do not wish to lay. You are insubordinate ducks, obstructionist ducks. Well, I have a cure for that. For two days you will go on half rations.” The commandant dismissed the ducks without seeing the abashed looks on the faces of the Allied prisoners who had overheard his lecture.

American culture has had a part in making the Japanese what they are today. In each camp the best guards were those who had lived in the United States and returned to Japan out of a sense of duty. The worst, the most ingrown and the most disoriented, were Japanese who had been dunked in a Californian atmosphere and withdrawn before they were coated. Finally there was also a kind of Japanese who had been barely sideswiped by the American dream, recovered his balance but was still slightly askew.

One Japanese guard in a Mitsui coal mine on Kyushu had never visited the United States, but was as touched as if he had. He rarely raised a
narugi
or
kiboko
(stick or club) against his prisoners, as the other jailers regularly did. While his skinny Americans toiled in the narrow, hot tunnels, their thin shoulders bent under the sagging, rotten beams, he watched them through half-closed eyes, feeding a golden dream. When they gradually learned what this dream was, they nicknamed him “Tom Mix”. In his own inward vision this little Japanese was a cowpuncher. He had seen every western movie that ever came to Japan, from William S. Hart to Roy Rogers. While his weary wards labored under the dripping black overhead, their hearts were already at home in the United States. His heart was at home too, but it was home on the range. He was riding the prairie, a black mustang dancing under him, his six-guns unlimbered and a lariat swinging loose on his finger.

Every now and then, swept away by his inner vision, this stubby Tom Mix would stand up in his stirrups as though forgetful where he was. He would give his lariat of air a few easy swirls around his flickering cap-lamp, and cast the imaginary lasso the length of the humid black tunnel toward an imaginary calf, pulling up sharply on his reins with his left hand. Easy in the saddle, he would push back his sombrero and haul in the reluctant animal.

Suddenly a suspicion would strike him. Was that a crooked sheriff, drawing bead on him from behind yonder cactus? In an instant he would make his lasso fast to his saddle horn—1,500 feet underground in a sweaty coal mine, its tunnels swishing with icy waters—twist in his coal car saddle, and let his six-guns split the dark with lightning. And then, while the thin, gaping prisoners from Bataan and Corregidor eased down their picks to watch him, he would dismount, swagger over and give the face-down sheriff (a discarded hand-drill) a kick full of contempt. Then he would swing up again on his pony. Watching the half-naked, sweating Americans through faraway eyes as they lugged nuggets to their cradle cars, he would roll and light himself a plainsman’s cigarette.

To most prisoners Tom Mix was just a Japanese who happened to be crazy in a western manner. But among the New Mexicans of the 200th Coast Artillery, almost all taken on Corregidor and Bataan, he was outright popular. For these southwesterners Tom Mix came as near as any Japanese could to making up for undreaming sadists like Squeaky, Clark Gable, the Greyhound, the Greek, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Flangeface. (I saw a Brooklyn boy beat up Flangeface in a lineup of guards before the evacuation team reached this camp.) Each guard generally beat up an American once or twice a week.

Perhaps the Japanese least likely to be forgotten by those who knew him is First Lieutenant Y. Murao, who until his downfall held the post of physician in a prison coal mine near Omuta. Murao did not “strafe” (plunder) Red Cross prisoner packages nor beat prisoners. He was himself a prisoner, of his own weakness. His vice was one no American should have found hard to forgive: an overpowering devotion to baseball. At first he concealed his frailty. It was not until he had doctored for several weeks at the camp that he gradually revealed that baseball, played as he conceived it, could be a method of torturing prisoners comparable with the electric seat and the water cup.

The idea of the camp administrator, Captain Yuri, was that a prisoner’s main and only job was to dig coal for the Japanese, and his only reward for twelve hours’ daily labor should be his salary of three-quarters of a cent daily, plus a
yassamai
or rest day every ten days or so.

Lieutenant Murao, whose nickname was “The Grunt”, had a view so opposite to this that it might almost be called dangerous. He believed that the Americans were in Japan simply to wait out the war. He felt that they should spend their time not digging coal but playing baseball. He had two reasons for this attitude: first, he argued that baseball was a healthy and natural conditioner for Americans; and second, he believed that he himself was a great coach. When he spoke of “playing baseball” he did not mean in any loose or sportive sense. “Play” was a euphemism. He meant play in the sense Knute Rockne did.

To see this Durocher
manqué
in the frame of his ambition it is necessary first to realize that all the prisoners in Camp #17, in hospital or out, were suffering from deficiency diseases. Living on three half-bowlfuls of rice a day, they had faded away till many looked like walking hat racks. Many had lost as much as fifty pounds. They had frequent fainting spells. They rarely understood anything not repeated twice. They found it nearly impossible to drag themselves to the top of the shaft when their shift was called. These miners were the fit. But the Grunt did not begin with the fit. He started with those who were worse off, who were confined to his hospital.

Murao entered baseball in a deceptively small way. Some of his patients had tuberculosis or pneumonia and could not even walk. He was forced to build his team around those who could arise from bed, a limitation he clearly resented. A few had broken arms or legs. Several had breaks they had caused themselves, or ulcers they had fed with cap-lamp acid. He was ready to excuse them from digging coal, but not from baseball. His infield was built around players who had diarrhea or dysentery. They were hardly able to swing a bat or walk to their positions with self-control. Running bases was to invite scenes of a very humiliating nature.

This impossible squad of listless misfits, on command, would follow the Grunt out of the hospital doors and dispose themselves about the diamond he had marked out. Then the ordeal of infield play or pepper practice would commence. The Grunt, as coach, would stand at home plate, rapping out the ball and calling the throws. The reactions of the players were slow. They could not even bend over quickly. Their straw sandals came off. A hard-hit ball would go through four or five skinny forks of legs, like croquet wickets. They reached for everything, but too late.

“We all had rice brain from under-nourishment,” says a former member of this squad. “When the Grunt said, ‘Two on and one out’ and then cracked the ball at us, we never had time to figure things out. He would try to ginger us up, scolding us when our throws fell short, as they nearly always did. But if we made a good play, he was pleased.”

Murao’s ambition was to have his patients play a town team of Japanese 4-F civilians. The day seemed far away. The favorite hit in the inter-patient games was the bunt; it was one way of making sure that no matter how many errors were made you would not have to run beyond first on the hit itself, and might even be fortunate enough to arrive after the ball. A man unlucky enough to beat out a bunt in his shambling shuffle would arrive on first and beseech the man coaching behind the bag to get him a bedpan. Players whom the Grunt signaled to steal second would reach the midway bag in such condition they would have to lie down and use the base as a pillow. (“To die on base” is only an expression, but many of Murao’s patients were nearer death after an enforced lope down to second than at any other time in their lives.)

The physician-coach was rather short, about thirty-two years old. He wore a baseball cap when coaching. Though a fireball as a manager, he never did any actual playing. During a game among the invalids he would sit on the mound of a bunker-style air raid shelter and make notes on the styles of his pathetic players. He also kept scorebooks and complete season records. On short notice he could tell anyone who was hitting better—a left fielder from the 26th Cavalry of Bataan whose legs were covered with ulcers of malnutrition, or a catcher from the Navy’s Yangtze patrols with two throwing fingers amputated from being caught in Mitsui’s outworn gears.

Captain Thomas Hewlett, a small, thoughtful physician who himself once operated outdoors on a prisoner’s appendix with a razor blade for scalpel, was a frequent involuntary player. In the Philippines Hewlett had originally worn a beard, but when Murao found out that he was less than thirty years old, he made him cut it off. “You would walk up there to the plate, feebly supporting your bat,” says Hewlett. “You wouldn’t dare take any practice swings; they made you feel too weak. If the pitch was good you would swing so that Murao wouldn’t give you hell. But you would pray not to hit it. You hoped to miss because if you had to run around those bases, you would not have strength enough to walk out to your place in the field when sides changed.”