Nigel Cawthorne (30 page)
Authors: Japanese Reaping the Whirlwind: Personal Accounts of the German,Italian Experiences of WW II
How many thousand shells will they hurl at Mount Hoshuku until they are satisfied, I wonder?
Obara reckoned that 20,000 or 30,000 shells had pounded their position, along with enough incendiaries to burn off the jungle covering.
Whenever there comes a break in the shelling, we emerge to beat out the fires around our foxholes.
On 28 April, increasing enemy reconnaissance missions led Obara to think that an attack was coming.
Two female guerrillas infiltrated the area of our company positions, but are quickly captured. Both rather plump females, they were about 40 years old, more or less. We exchanged some words in a mixture of broken English and Tagalog and they tried to appear innocent, saying they had come from Montalban to dig up roots. After plying them with various questions – ha! they were nothing but animals – they are killed in the bush.
Again he berated the ingratitude of the Filipinos.
Naturally American soldiers are our enemies, but we are beginning to think the Filipinos are even worse enemies. They, too, were born and reared, as were we, in the Orient, and we are the ones who gave them at last their long-sought independence. How incredible that in spite of this they should be aiding foreign devils against magnanimous Japan. It is generally recognized that Japan is a just country, and the Imperial Army a just army. It may be that in the first stages of the war in the Philippines, we were a little too indulgent with them. Japan seeks only co-operation, while the coming of the American forces has brought to the Philippines the misery of war, and yet they turn solidly to the enemy. But the day will come when we have annihilated the American army, and we must then exterminate these Philippine beasts until not one remains. It would be incalculably easier to fight this war if the Filipinos were our comrades-in-arms, or even if they did not become our friends but just did not take the side of the enemy … It makes me angry just to think about it.
The next day, 29 April, was the emperor’s birthday.
Many are convinced that on the emperor’s birthday we shall resume the offensive and begin an advance on Manila, but right now it seems to me to be an empty dream. It appears unlikely that our aircraft are coming. The word is that we are nearly out of rations and no one knows how long this may continue … Each man must survive on a daily ration of about 200 grams, but after no great number of days one must expect that even this will dwindle down to nothing … Day by day, not only provisions grow less, but also the number of our men diminishes by ones and twos. This is warfare bitter in the extreme.
The supply position made Obara reflective.
How many days, I wonder, will I begin making the battlefield jottings? How many times have I thought, today is the last! That I have been able, in spite of all, to go this far with these notes is to me a matter for grateful wonder. Yet, in all honesty, what good is it to continue such a thing as this? I realize I will probably never be able to take it home, and I don’t know how often it has occurred to me to give it up. I must confess it seems strange even to myself that I have kept on and even now go on jotting down one thing after another. If fate is kind, perhaps someone will come along who will find this diary and take it to my home; otherwise, I suppose it will in the end just rot away here in the depths of a Philippine mountain forest. Well, whatever the reason, although I probably should put it aside and forget it, I go on writing. Bullets rain down all around me and still I go on writing. It cannot claim to be literature, so it must be because this diary has become like a child to me. In any case, this journal records the names of my men who, having fallen, have gone to join the pantheon of spirits guarding the nation. Crude though it may be, when I think of these men, it is precious to me.
The emperor’s birthday dawned, not with an advance on Manila or the arrival of Japanese planes, but with ‘an artillery bombardment such as to seem to turn day back into darkness again’. It ended with a thunderstorm that rivalled the intensity of the artillery bombardment. Then the month changed with no sign of an offensive and there were other things to worry about.
The sun of May beats down upon the battlefield, and as the atmosphere grows ever more oppressive, the sweat begins to flow so fast, it drips … The men are being disabled in rapid succession by the high fever that accompanies malaria. In a critical situation such as this, this problem is an especially perplexing one. I note with anguish that, not only are our remaining medicines inadequate for our present needs, but supplies such as syringes are completely exhausted. Yet these are men who will pour out their last drop of strength in the effort to destroy the enemy. Standing guard day and night with 40°C fevers, a fever high enough to blind them, still they managed to maintain battle readiness even under the broiling sun. It is painful to witness.
The general good order of the Imperial Army was also affected:
Our hair and beards are growing thick and long, so that we begin to look like wild men, but we will put up with anything until at last every one of the enemy has been destroyed.
On 2 May, the enemy attacked with tanks. ‘After nine hours of bitter fighting, we succeeded in repelling them with heavy losses.’ But there was also a cost to Japanese morale.
Our military strength is now so diminished, I hardly have the heart to write about it. Pen and paper are too frail to convey what it was like to receive the enemy’s main attack full in the face … Numb with grief, I write the names of my fallen men. And while I write in this frail, tattered notebook, I, too, step by step approach the abyss of a depth so blue it shades into black. Pain will follow pain until fallen, until the last man, and a single … banzai!
Even so, the following day another attack was repelled, at great cost to the Americans.
In relation to the enemy’s losses, ours are perhaps only one to their ten. Still, each one is a priceless sacrifice. Will tomorrow bring the tenth enemy attack? Well, whether the tenth or the 100th, we will continue to hold this ground and let them fell the strength of the Imperial Army until at last they have had enough! Flying our banners in the name of Akita Danjiro [‘the youth of Akita’ – a city in northwest Honshu], we shall endow them with a glory that will make them shine forth all the more gloriously. In this way we shall perform the ultimate service for our country.
Boy’s Festival Day, 5 May, was celebrated with good news: ‘Fifty of our aircraft are in action in the air over Marikina.’
We have so long wished to be able once again to look up and see wings emblazoned with the crimson sun. Just hearing of this report brings such a look of relief to the faces of the men. If only we could see them with our own eyes, hear them with our own ears, how much the more joyful would be these faces.
Then the Army newspaper turned up for the first time in a long while.
There are articles on the American populace in crisis, the strong resistance put up by the Germans …
(but Berlin had already fallen and Germany was two days from surrender)
…and news from Okinawa as recent as 17 April describing our great victories there. The enemy lost all of 390 ships sunk or damaged. A minimum estimate of their losses in men is 800,000, of which 210,000 were killed. Our Shimbu Group battle results also appear. We are 56,000 strong. Just a little while longer, the time for a general offensive is perhaps at hand.
On 7 May, while under attack in something like ‘a shooting contest’, news came that: ‘The enemy on the island of Okinawa is annihilated (confirmed by the Army).’ In fact, General Ushijima, defending Okinawa, had made one last attack, which failed at the cost of 5,000 men. ‘Now you see the fix you are in,’ wrote Obara, addressing the Americans. ‘We have been concerned for the homeland, but this news has relieved our minds.’
Somewhere far from this charred mountain exists the spirit of Corporal Asano, who fell in the defence of the homeland and who must have been greatly concerned over its welfare. May he find heart’s ease in this news. He was denied the joy of hearing this news in his lifetime, and we are powerless to tell it to him now.
Asano had been sent back to the front line even though he had a shell fragment in his leg.
One cannot remember him without a sense of regret. To men generally, it is a matter of concern where one may meet his death, but for the soldier, neither the place nor the manner in which death may come should occupy his mind. Yet all our men who have fallen have died splendidly … May those of us who remain hope for a splendid death.
The opportunity was soon at hand.
8 May: Today is Imperial Rescript Day … at last the great order of the offensive is received!! The date for X-Day is imminent. How we have waited for this, the order for a general offensive! The order that we have exhausted our patience waiting for ever since we first heard of the enemy landings! And now this order has been received. X-Day!! X-Day!! … It is now no longer a dream, we will be coming back, and with flags flying … I feel tears unconsciously welling up. I don’t know how I keep from weeping. The men are similarly affected.
Plans were laid to retake Manila.
‘Can it be coming true at last?’ is the thought that goes through my mind. We have waited so long for this order, day after day, clinging grimly to this crumbling mountain while being blanketed by a deluge of shells. No matter how impetuous our spirit, all we were able to do was to grit our teeth and swallow our tears and hold on … Now this is dispelled and my heart is light. I feel I cannot remain quiet – I want to sing. I look up at the sky and I see the gleaming of machine-gun bullets as they stream over our heads. I lean back and gaze through them at the clear bright sky, and feel my heart as clear and bright as the sky while I watch the white clouds silently passing over the violence of the battlefield … Beasts, pour on the shells and bombs as much as you can! You have just a little longer to shoot and die – X-Day is coming. Night has ended.
What actually happened was a redoubling of the American shelling.
I stuff my ears with rags, but even so it seems any moment my eardrums will be broken. The violence of the explosions is such that with each explosion my palpitating heart seems to skip a beat. I crawl into the side-hole of my command bunker, but the concussions follow me there and continue to shake my whole frame. The roof seems about to cave in. It is a terrific shelling. It is as if they will not be satisfied until they have fired in one day all the shells their trucks had spent the whole day in hauling up. They blast away at random like madmen. These mountains are now altered beyond recognition from what they had once been. If you were to tell a visitor now that these mountains had formerly been covered with forests so thick it was dark even in broad daylight, who could believe you? … As shells continue to fall around my command bunker, I curse and cling to the wall, worrying whether the enemy is now advancing, and whether I should stick my head out, and almost sweating blood as I stay there and take it. I feel as if blood would flow from my hair-roots if I rubbed my skin.
Listening to the shell bursts, it sounds as if the worst of the shelling is falling on the positions of the men further down. I wonder how they are making out, and who may have caught it, and will the rest be buried in their dugouts.
Spontaneously, I begin to pray, ‘Oh, gods, protect us.’
Soldiers under shelling often unconsciously touch with one hand the good-luck banner they have wrapped around the belly, and naturally they may also touch and make sure their talisman is on them where it belongs. Then when the shelling subsides, and they assemble in a dugout and greet one another, their faces are a blend of laughter and soberness, and their words will be casual and simple, yet to me somehow noble.
Unfortunately, Obara had forgotten to put on his talisman and the good-luck banner given to him by the people of his home town. Instead he comforted himself with the thought: ‘Forget the gods, rely on yourself’ and ‘He whose time it is to die, will die; he whose time it is to live, will live.’ Afterwards he grew pensive.
When I gaze around our raked, harrowed and ruined position, it comes to me, what a strange place for me to be. Soldier by the grace of the Emperor, yet also a living human being, feeling instinctively like any man the desire to live. Somehow I have been able through all this to repress these impulses to weakness. Because I am a man? No. Because I am a soldier? No. It is because I am Japanese, a son of Japan, a soldier of the Emperor.
He took advantage of an intermission in the shelling to poke his head out of the command bunker and look over at the enemy.
There, as if to mock us, more and more men are perching on the northern slope of Shimbu Hill. I curse them as mongrel curs, but for the moment all I can do is grind my teeth. It is unbearably bitter. Thinking of my men being opposed by these beasts, any anger rises. But we shall soon see! We will destroy you. In the end not even one of you will be left.
Sudden downpours indicated that the rainy season was about to begin. The rain brought with it new life:
Here and there on the burned and blasted surface of the mountain, grass has sprouted. Growing serenely in the little spaces between one shell hole and another, it has reached in places heights of seven or eight inches. But then, having with great persistence achieved this growth, it is in the end blown up by a shell or cut down by a shell fragment.