3. Bataan Peninsula, on the road from Mariveles, early afternoon of April 11, 1942.
Sergeant (Gunsō) Mitsugi Kubo felt he had good reason to feel pleased with himself. With feet planted firmly apart on the macadam surface of the road, and still gripping the handle of his uncoiled whip, he watched as his subordinates dragged the unconscious American nurse he had just whipped to the edge of the road where they dumped her limp form on its side facing her stricken comrades.
He had enjoyed laying the lash on the pretty American nurse’s fair-skinned bare back. And had reveled in the way he had made her flinch in anticipation, and in how her body had arched, twisted and recoiled in reaction to each of his expertly-placed strokes. He especially enjoyed how, after the first two, she had screamed and howled.
To see her suffer at his hands had excited him physically in a very special way. But the psychological side was empowering too. He felt a sense of deep gratification in observing the horror and terror the whipping had instilled in each and everyone of the other nurses.
He believed he had taught them a lesson they were unlikely to forget. By stripping the woman who was their apparent leader half-naked, and whipping her before their very eyes, he had demonstrated their total vulnerability and helplessness, assuring himself that they would now regard him with exactly the kind of fear and respect he desired and deserved. The Americans were soft and weak, and Kubo knew that terror was the most effective tool with which to gain their complete submission to his will.
Hailing from modest origins in the industrial port city of Kobe, and possessing a certain kind of asocial temperament, Kubo had found a life with the Imperial Army that offered the twenty-eight-year-old exactly the kind of opportunity for advancement and self-importance he relished. He had worked hard to suggest to his superiors that he possessed leadership skills ... that he could bend others to his will ... and had risen to the rank of sergeant ... an accomplishment that fell far short of what he imagined himself worthy of, but still gave him control over others, which is what he so desperately craved. And, he had accordingly managed to browbeat and intimidate the three-man-detail he now led to the point that he was confident that they would jump not only at his every verbal command, but also to a simple glance or look.
And having been recently assigned to take part in the operation to move POWs up the Bataan Peninsula had offered him a special opportunity to lord himself over large numbers of unfortunates who had dishonored themselves in defeat and were therefore fully deserving of whatever pain or indignity he might choose to inflict upon them. The fact that those placed directly under his control were females ... American females, no less ... seemed almost to good to be true.
But, there was a need for immediate action now. A new column of American POWs was coming up the road, and he reckoned that their approach offered him an opportune time to get his charges on the road. He had, after all, little desire to waste his hateful talents on mere Filipinos when there were Americans at hand.
So, with the intention of attaching his nurses to the tail end of the fast approaching American column, he hastened his men to rouse the fainted nurse officer, and get her on her feet, so that she and her nurses could be driven out to join the tail end of the column as it passed by.
***********
Second Lieutenant Kristen Olsen saw the approaching column too, and could tell even at a distance from the uniforms that it was an American unit, rather than yet another of the many Filipino ones she had seen pass by. She also saw that the Japanese soldier who had taken a whip to Lieutenant Moore was issuing orders again, and that his men were springing into action.
While one soldier urged the nurses to their feet by gesturing upward repeatedly with his weapon and yelling torrents of what were undoubtedly abusive Japanese words at them, the other two knelt down beside Lieutenant Moore’s prone figure and pulled her by the arms into a limp sitting position. Freeing his canteen from his belt, one of them poured water over her head, while the other repeatedly slapped her across the face.
Kristen watched as Barb coughed and sputtered, shook her head a couple times, and opened her eyes ... but then her head slumped forward, chin to her chest. She appeared to have passed out again, which was concerning to Kristen because she sensed that she and the other nurses were on their feet for the purpose of moving out, and she didn’t put it at all past the Japanese soldiers to shoot Lieutenant Moore and leave her behind if they couldn’t revive her.
While Kristen and the other fifteen nurses all held the rank of second lieutenant (the Army granted its nurses officer status, largely for the purpose of “protecting” them from unwanted advances by enlisted men who, it was said, believed the practice was actually to reserve exclusive “access” for male officers), she knew that the other nurses saw her as closest to the Lieutenant and would be looking to her for leadership in Barb’s absence, a responsibility she’d rather not have to assume.
But to her profound relief, Barb appeared to be responding to a second dousing. The Japanese soldiers were soon hoisting Barb to her feet, relieving her of the shredded remains of her blouse and bra, which they tossed aside, and propelling her, supported between them, across the roadside ditch and straight into the arms of Kristin and two other nurses who stepped forward to assist in catching and supporting her before she collapsed.
“We’ve got you Lieutenant,” Kristin breathed into Barb’s ear. “I’m so sorry. But it’s going to be alright. We’ve got you now.”
“I know ... thanks!” gasped Barb. “Just give me a minute or two ... okay ... a minute or two ... and I think I can stand.”
“God, Barb! Look what they’ve done to you!” Kristin breathed, gingerly tracing a finger along one of the angry blood-flecked stripes on Barb’s back.
“I’ll be alright, Lieutenant. Really I will. Just let me lean on you a bit.”
“Right. But it looks like they want us out on the road now.”
“Yeah, appears so.”
Their Japanese guards had begun to gesture again with their weapons and were shouting “Hanzuappu! Hanzuappu!”, which the nurses had come to know meant exactly what it sounded like ... “hands up!”
“Go ahead,” said Barb. “I’ll be alright.”
But as soon as Kristin released her supporting hold under Barb’s arm in order to clasp her own hands behind her head, Barb slumped forward, landing on her hands and knees. Alarmed, Kristin dropped her hands, and stepped forward, but then stopped dead in her tracks. Kubo had seen Barb falter and was coming on fast, still gripping his whip.
“Don’t help me. Stand back. I’ll be alright” cried Barb, as she struggled to stand, tottered unsteadily for a few seconds, but then straightened up ... just as Kubo came up to confront her. Looking him dead straight in the eye, she slowly and defiantly raised her hands and clasped them behind her head.
For a moment it looked like he was about to strike her, but instead he backed off and stalked away, shouting orders over his shoulder.
His soldiers responded by herding Barb and her nurses, like a flock of geese, across the ditch and out onto the road ... just as the last of the Americans shuffled by.
*******
Whitaker watched as the entire drama play out ... trying not to be too obvious about it, for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the Japanese guards, who had been roughing up some of those up ahead foolish enough to whistle at or call out to the nurses gathered at the side of the road.
“Eyes front,” he called out evenly to those around him. "Don’t give those bastards any cause. Pass the word.”
But, he couldn’t stop himself from stealing backward glances at the bevy of nurses falling in behind, and following15 or 20 feet behind him and the men. He thought, at first, that they might close the gap, but they didn’t.
In particular, he kept looking back at the brunette who had been whipped. She walked several paces to the front of the others, eyes straight ahead. She was topless, and therefore there was no insignia from which to determine her rank, but it was pretty obvious that she was in charge of the others.
He kept looking back. It seemed safe enough to do so as their usual Japanese escorts seemed occupied farther up the line, and Kubo and his detail were trailing some distance behind everyone, their vision somewhat obscured by the nurses before them, who tended to huddle closely together.
All of the nurses marched along with hands clasped behind their heads, which in itself gave reason to look back, and he noticed that he was hardly the only one among his comrades near the rear of the column stealing backward glances. But it was the nurse in front, the brunette, marching topless with arms raised, dog tags glinting in the sunlight between her gently bobbing and swaying, upturned breasts, that Whitaker just couldn’t take his eyes off.
“Nice pair of tits, eh?” teased Norm, nudging Whitaker in the ribs with an elbow. “Who wouldn’t want to get his hands on them babies and just suck away at those cute poky nipples?”
“Mmmmm .... scrumptious ... yeah, scrumptious,” chimed in Clem, pantomiming with both hands the act of fondling and sucking right then left.
But when they turned to look at Whitaker for a reaction he was gone.
Acting on impulse ... against all reason ... Whitaker had abruptly turned about and set off on-the-double back toward the nurses, stripping off his uniform shirt as he went. And on reaching Barb’s side, and before she had time to react to something so totally unexpected, he slipped around behind her to drape his shirt over her shoulders, carefully tucking its collar around her neck so it wouldn’t fall off.
“A pretty dame like you, really ought to cover up.” he said gallantly, striding back into her view and flashing her a smile and a wink worthy of a matinee screen idol.
“But ... I ... who? ...“
He was already gone, disappearing into the ranks ahead.
Barb dropped both hands from behind her head to catch his shirt before it slipped from her shoulders and back. Glancing quickly behind her, she saw that some of her nurses were smirking at her. Kristin even gave her a sly wink. Turning her eyes back to the front, she tried to spot him, but wasn’t quite sure which of the soldiers he was. There were many who had cast their shirts away in the heat, and wore only undershirts. It had all happened so fast.
In haste, she pulled the shirt together in front and secured it with one button, before clasping her hands behind her head again.
But, far to the rear, the scene had not gone unnoticed by Kubo, who was already barging his way forward, roughly jostling nurses aside as he passed through them like a ship at sea plowing through waves. On reaching Barb’s side he sped right on by, then abruptly turned to confront her, backpedaling as he looked her up and down.
Barb stared studiously straight ahead as though he wasn’t there.
Turning about, he surveyed the rear of the POW column ahead, clearly searching without success for the perpetrator who dared to commit such an outrage.
Pivoting, he glared at Barb, his eyes and facial expression conveying his fury.
She continued to stare ahead as though he was invisible.
The standoff lasted for several uncomfortably long seconds. It ended ominously with Kubo drawing an index finger across his neck in a slashing motion, and stomping off.
‘Oh, dear God!” Barb thought to herself.