7. Bataan Peninsula, on the coastal road from Cabcaben to Balanga, midday, April 12, 1942.
Exhausted, footsore, hungry and sweltering in the stifling heat under the midday sun, 1st Lieutenant Barbara Moore shuffled along, a few paces out in front of her nurses. A short distance ahead trudged the survivors of the 45th Regiment. This was the second day of the forced march up the peninsula under the ever watchful and scornful eyes of their Japanese escorts.
Barb’s mind, however, wasn’t focused on the road, the heat or their escorts. It was instead trying to grapple with the horrific events of the early morning. That morning she had been forced to watch as Japanese soldiers, looking for contraband, strip-searched two of her young nurses, finding one of them in possession of Japanese yen. She had then been strip-searched herself, along with Kristen Olsen, her closest friend among her nurses.
Kubo, who was behind the sudden search for contraband, had ordered all four nurses to be bound naked, two at a time, to a pair of fence posts and summarily executed. Barb and Kristin had watched in horror as 2nd Lieutenants Ginny Price and Maisie Jones were shot dead. And then she and Kristin had been forced to take their turn before Kubo’s two-man firing squad.
As it turned out, Barb had been spared, apparently by the last minute intervention of a Japanese officer. But they had shot Kristen!
Thoroughly traumatized, Barb had been unable to keep her mind from replaying in an endless loop how she, after being released from the post to which she had been bound, had been witness to Kristin’s dying moments. And how she had been torn from the side of her stricken friend by Kubo himself, pulled to her feet and shoved off to rejoin the living.
She recalled stopping to pick up, from the scattering of torn and tattered garments left on the ground in the wake of the strip-searches, anything she might use to cover her nakedness. Searching about, she located the shirt that Whitaker had given to her the day before. The buttons were missing, victims of the shirt having being literally ripped from her body during the search. But the one nearest the collar remained. She had put the shirt on, buttoning it at the top and noting ruefully that the tails scarcely covered her privates and butt. She had looked for a skirt she might salvage, but they had all been ripped and torn to the point of uselessness.
From there it had been into the arms of her nurses, who crowded around her protectively. But she had also found them frantic. Everyone was in tears and irrepressibly excitable Betty Murphy kept shouting shrilly, “They’re going to kill us all.”
Barb knew that she ought to have acted responsibly ... to have taken command at that moment ... done her best to be a calming influence. It’s what she normally did. But she couldn’t. Instead she shoved them all away from her and stalked off. And when the Japanese came around shortly thereafter to offer everyone a meager breakfast of a single stale biscuit, she had refused, choosing instead to sit on the ground by herself, arms locked around her knees, rocking gently back and forth while staring vacantly into the distance.
And when they were ordered to take to the road, she had gotten up slowly and passed through, eyes fixed straight ahead, to take her place in front of her thirteen surviving nurses.
**********
Kubo watched, with satisfaction, the obvious stress displayed by the head American nurse. He enjoyed playing mind games with people, exploiting their fears and weaknesses, terrorizing and bending them to his will. And he felt that he was well on his way to dominating this proud woman. In the coming days he would find new ways to torment her both mentally and physically. He would make her life a living hell ... until he chose to extinguish it.
And, as for that American army officer who had dared to look after her ... he’d see to him as well.
***********
It was noon before Tanaka reached the town of Lubao and General Homma’s field headquarters. As anticipated, Tanaka was late.
His progress had been slowed by the long columns of POWs that clogged the narrow coastal road. Each time he came upon one, he had to sit idly by while they were herded into the ditch so that his staff car could pass.
On reaching Lubao, he had his driver drop him off in front of the imposing edifice of the town’s Saint Augustine Church, which had been commandeered as 14th Army Headquarters.
Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma looked up from his map table as Tanaka entered and smiled. Tanaka was one of his favorites, a staff officer whom he not only liked very much but whom he found to be levelheaded and reliable. And Homma was in dire need of such men, for he was under immense pressure, having earned the enmity of his superior, General Count Hisaichi Terauchi, for Homma’s treatment of Filipino civilians, which the high command regarded as far too lenient. And from below, Homma’s authority was being challenged by hotheaded subordinates who had been secretly issuing orders under his name that had led to widespread executions of innocents.
Homma, like his young protégé, Tanaka, had spent time in the West, and had acquired some respect for westerners, including their American adversaries. As a military attaché to Great Britain during the Great War he had been with the East Lancashire Regiment in France, and had returned again to Europe as a military attaché in the early 1930s.
Waving Tanaka to a chair across the table from him, he waited for the younger officer to be seated before saying, “Good you’re here at last, Tanaka. Report. Tell me what you have witnessed these last two days.”
“Yes General, the good news is that the American and Filipino POWs appear to be moving in good order on the road north to the railhead at San Fernando. The bad news is that there are so many of them. I estimate their numbers at sixty to seventy thousand, possibly even more. And the other bad news is that many are in a sorry state, weak from hunger and near exhaustion. There is little food available with which to feed them, and no transport. Our soldiers have no choice but to simply execute any who fall out, and I can tell you that many dead bodies clog the roadside ditches. But, if I may sir, I must report that I have also seen instances of wanton cruelty on the part of our soldiers, and I have on a number of occasions been obliged to intervene personally to save innocent lives.”
“That is a pity, indeed,” said Homma, tenting his hands and leaning forward before speaking further, “But, as you well know Tanaka, this is war, and this campaign has been hard fought. Our side suffered many casualties, which explains ...”
“True, Sir, but our soldiers ... well ...”
“Well what, Tanaka?”
“Well, this morning ... I witnessed some of our men engaged in executing some American Army nurses. I intervened and managed to save one of them, but three others were murdered in cold blood.”
“Sad. What had they done?”
“The man in charge, a Sergeant Kubo, claimed that they were found to be in possession of Imperial Army scrip, and therefore subject to summary execution ... per your orders.”
“My orders, my dear Tanaka, but not my wish. I regret that pressures from above and below have placed me in an awkward moral position. I had no choice but to sign those orders. It was that or suffer the extreme dishonor of being dismissed.”
“I understand, sir.”
“But, Tanaka. There is a ‘but’, isn’t there? Always a but with you. What is it?”
“I want to go back, Sir, to check on what happened with those nurses.”
“You say that you already managed to save one of them from being shot?”
“Yessir.”
“And I take it you now have taken a personal interest in her?”
“Well, yes. Not in the way you imply, if I catch your meaning, but as a matter of honor.”
“Alright, I see. Go back if you must, Tanaka. I will cut orders sending you back to perform another fact finding mission. But ... do understand ... that you are on your own with these nurses. Whatever you may do on their behalf, you cannot claim that I have any knowledge.”
“Yessir, understood.”
A quarter hour later, Tanaka had left the company of the General, stepped out onto the town square and located his ‘Type 95’, parked in the shade of a building, his driver asleep at the wheel.
***********
Whitaker had said nothing after witnessing Kubo’s search and execution of three nurses, including the last minute sparing of Lieutenant Moore’s life. He hadn’t remained to see her reunited with the other nurses. By that time he had walked away without looking back.
When the Japanese came around to offer he and his men a little hardtack, their first nourishment in more than a day, he had accepted it. Sitting on the ground, he ate alongside Norm and Clem, but was unresponsive to anything said to him. And on the march, he continued to brood and little was said by anyone around him, which in some ways was a good thing because it gave the Japanese less excuse to harass anyone.
*************
Kubo was in high spirits as he swaggered along behind the nurses. The day was becoming beastly hot, and he knew that the heat would soon be taking its toll on the American POWs. The weaker ones would soon be falling out, and the killing would begin. His nurses, though, appeared to be holding up well enough ... better fed and rested, he reasoned, unlike the frontline soldiers.
After awhile, he quickened his pace, passing through the nurses to reach the side of their leader, the Lieutenant they called Moore. She ignored him, even though he knew she must be aware of his presence. Studying her, he noted her long bare legs ... something to admire in these tall American women, he thought to himself. Reaching behind her back he lifted the tails of her shirt to expose her bare bottom and observe the gentle movements of her ass-cheeks as she walked.
It was at that point that she turned to shoot him a disapproving glance. Mockingly, he responded with an exaggerated kissy face. Her eyes widened and her mouth parted as if to say something. But instead she turned away to face the front.
In that fleeting moment, Kubo could sense her fear and loathing, which pleased him.
Releasing her shirttail, he quickened his pace, passing by her, stepping over to the side of the road and hurrying past the POWs filling the road ahead. Kobo had decided to go find his immediate superior, Lieutenant Kinoshita, whom he knew to be somewhere near the head of the column.
About halfway there, he found Kinoshita standing near the side of the road, overseeing the execution of several POWs.
“Ah, my dear Kubo,” Kinoshita said, looking up as his men beheaded and mutilated the bodies of several dead American prisoners. “What brings you forward?”
“Just a friendly visit,” grinned Kobo. “We seem to be making good time today, yes?”
“Indeed, we are. But the heat is beginning to take its toll on our charges. As you can see, we’ve had to make an example of these laggards,” replied Kinoshita, nodding in the direction of the heap of corpses lying in the ditch.
“Then we should make Balanga by nightfall?”
“Easily. Why do you ask?”
“Rumor has it there’s a comfort station there.”
“Ah, Kubo, indeed there is. I should have known that was it. Feeling a bit randy, are you?”
“Only natural,” laughed Kubo, his mind conjuring up a delectable image of Lieutenant Moore’s tight little ass cheeks spread open for his pleasure.
