9. Bataan Peninsula, Balanga, night of April 12-13, 1942.
Within hours of nightfall, Balanga’s stately Plaza Mayor had become a scene of total bedlam. Roaming Japanese soldiers were everywhere. Many were drunk and in a destructive mood. At least three buildings facing the square had been set ablaze. Discarded booty of all sizes and descriptions littered the pavements. Queues of boisterous soldiers jostled impatiently before the main entrance to the imposingly columned, white-washed facade of the town hall, anxious to get their few minutes of carnal ecstasy with one of the comfort girls awaiting them inside.
That was the chaotic scene that greeted Sergeant Kubo and his small party as it approached the square. Kubo had taken care to reach it via a narrow side street. He had done so in order to avoid any unwanted confrontations ... a prudent precaution given the fact that he along with two of his underlings were escorting three very attractive American nurse POWs whom he planned to offer up as ... what he imagined would be ... a welcomed addition to the serving capacity of the brothel set up inside the town hall.
Spotting an officer, standing off to one side of the classical columns flanking the main entrance, and who appeared to be in charge of controlling the flow of queued up soldiers waiting to get inside, Kubo ordered his men to close up tightly around the three nurses and to follow him. Together they stepped out, quickly skirted the front of the building unobserved, mounted the three steps to the entrance-level, and approached the officer from behind his back.
“Excuse me Sir.”
“What?” answered the startled officer, pivoting to face Kubo. He wore a red-orange arm band, the Japanese color denoting pleasure.
“First Sergeant Mitsugi Kubo reporting Sir! ... I bring you greetings from my superior, Lieutenant Kinoshita, 27th Independent Mixed Brigade, 48th Division, along with what he and I hope might be a welcome addition to the ability of your station to provide comfort to our brave soldiers."
Stepping smartly aside, he presented his gift: Barb, Natalie and Betty.
“Americans?”
“Yessir. POWs.”
“I see .... well yes ... Sergeant ... uh ...”
“Kubo, Sir.”
“Yes, Kubo. I accept your kind offer. These three will indeed be a most welcome addition to our little enterprise. Please convey to your Lieutenant ... uh ...”
“Kinoshita, Sir!”
“Right. Please convey my thanks ... I’m Captain Eiko Sakamoto, by the way ... to him for this inestimable gift of charity.”
“I will, Captain. But first, one small request, if I may?”
“Of course.”
“Perhaps, if it would not be too much to ask, whether my men and I might be given a place of privilege near the very front of the queue.”
“Not too much to ask at all, Sergeant. I will see to it personally. Please follow me inside.”
***************
From the moment that Kubo and his men had driven Barb ... along with Natalie and Betty ... wrists bound behind their backs ... through the wire and back onto the road in the direction of Balanga, Barb had been filled with dread. She hadn’t been sure what this was all about, but it couldn’t have been good. The one thing that seemed certain, was that Kubo was about to take his revenge.
They had headed down the road at a good clip. Kubo was out in front. Barb, Natalie and Betty followed in his wake. His subordinates brought up the rear, ready to prod the women along with the butt of a gun should they slacken their pace. On the horizon, low-hanging clouds glowed orange in reflection of fires burning in the town ahead.
Before reaching the outskirts, Kubo had veered off the road, leading his little party into and through the town via deserted lanes, alleys and back streets. He clearly knew his way around. Barb imagined he must have spent time there earlier, during the fighting. And when at last they reached the center, he held them back while he crept cautiously ahead to take stock of the wild commotion that had engulfed the town square.
“Now what?” whispered Betty as they waited. “I don’t like the looks of this! What’s he doing?”
“Not sure,” said Natalie, eying Kubo as he returned to issue orders to his men. "But I think we are about to find out."
Moments later, holding their long rifles across their chests, the soldiers had pressed the three nurses tightly together and hustled them out onto the square and up the nearby steps leading to the entrance of the square’s largest building.
There, Barb watched as Kubo engaged in conversation a Japanese officer wearing a orange-red arm band, gesturing at and drawing the officer’s attention to Barb, Natalie and Betty. Barb thought she caught the officer’s name: Sakamoto. As the two men talked, the officer kept looking at them appraisingly, and nodded in apparent agreement with something Kubo had said. Moments later, he led them all inside.
“Wonder why all those Jap soldiers are lined up like that to get inside?” mused Betty.
“I imagine you don’t really want to know,” replied Natalie dryly.
Behind them, as they entered, a sudden flash illuminated the square. Another building had burst into flame.
“Hurry, get inside!” urged Barb.
One inside, Sakamoto led them through a marble-floored lobby, away from the entrance doors behind which the queue of soldiers stood waiting. They turned left and proceeded down a side-corridor until they came to a door.
“In here,” Sakamoto said, opening the door and stepping aside. “Untie their wrists, and leave them here.”
Kubo and his men stood aside to usher the girls inside.
*********
Whitaker lay on the ground a short distance from Norm and Clem. He knew he should be getting some shuteye, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Lieutenant Moore. He was certain that something was amiss. He could think of no logical reason why she might have missed their rendezvous. And he was puzzled by the fact that when he had made his way over to the other side of the camp, getting as near as he dared to where the nurses slept under the watchful eye of an alert-looking Japanese guard ... try as he might, he couldn’t identify her among the sleeping forms. Kubo was nowhere to be seen either. Something was definitely amiss.
**********
Tanaka fumed in frustration. Darkness had made further travel along the coastal road all but impossible. Despite the surrender of the American and Filipino forces on Bataan, the island fortress of Corregidor still held out, and a strict blackout was being maintained along the peninsula’s supply routes. Although he and his driver had covered more than half the distance to Balanga, they had been faced with little choice but to stop for the night. He had told his driver to get some sleep as he intended that they be off again at first light. He wondered what had become of the American Lieutenant and her nurses. He’d check on them if he had the opportunity, but again he knew that with planning underway for the final assault on Corrigedor, General Homma’s orders would require most of his energies over the coming days.
**********
Barb, along with with Natalie and Betty, had found themselves rudely propelled into a modest-sized, elegantly paneled room ... most probably a conference room once used by the colonial town administration. But now it was occupied by a couple dozen frightened-looking young women, all of whom appeared to be Filipinas. The Filipina girls stood huddled together on one side of the room under the watchful eye of half as many Japanese ... each carrying a sidearm and wearing the orange-red arm bands like the one worn by Sakamoto.
Barb rubbed her wrists, which had been freed by Kubo himself, and looked dumbly at one of the orange arm-banded Japanese, who motioned that she was to join the Filipino girls. Natalie and Betty were already there. In the brief silence that followed she became aware that the room was adjoined by another, accessed via a double set of doors, through which she could hear the sound of male voices, the scraping sound of heavy furniture being shoved about, and what sounded like hammering.
Sakamoto, Kubo and his men had taken their leave after propelling Barb, Natalie and Betty inside the room and freeing their wrists. Before pulling the door closed behind him, though, Kubo had stopped momentarily to grin wickedly in Barb’s direction.
“I don’t like this at all,” cried Betty, quizzically eyeing one of the Japanese men who had begun to yell and wave his arms.
In response to his antics, a few of the Filipina women began to remove articles of clothing.
“I believe he’s telling them ... in Filipino ... to get undressed,” observed Natalie in her usual clinically antiseptic manner.
“He doesn’t mean us too?” gasped Betty.
“I think he does,” said Barb, as a second man had begun to pantomime the act of undressing, while a third aimed his service handgun directly at her forehead. “Looks like they don’t know any English.”
Seeing no point in resisting, Barb slowly undid the single remaining button on Whitaker’s shirt, shrugged and allowed the shirt, which was her only article of clothing, to slide from her shoulders and down her arms to the parqueted floor. Kicking off her shoes, she balanced awkwardly... first on one foot and then the other ... to remove her socks.
Natalie and Betty followed her example, stripping away, one after another, blouses, skirts, underwear, shoes and stockings.
“What are they going to do to us?” wailed Betty, strategically covering herself as best she could with her arms. Rape us all right here on the floor?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Natalie, who was watching as one of their Japanese handlers, satisfied that all articles of clothing had been removed, went over to rap three times on one of the double doors. “It’s probably going to happen in the next room.”
*********
In the meantime, Kubo and his men, after following Captain Sakamoto on a circuitous route around to the other side of the building, had arrived in the room beyond those double doors. It was large and high-ceilinged, lit by an immense hanging crystal chandelier and paneled in dark wood ... a ceremonial hall of some sort. At its far end, Sakamoto’s men had lined up a number of heavy wooden tables end-to-end, while others were finishing the task of hammering a row of large spikes into the far edges of the lined up tabletops.
“We run a very efficient comfort service here,” Sakamoto informed Kubo. “But with the cessation of the fighting, we’ve been overwhelmed by the need of our brave soldiers for the comforts we provide. Our ‘Anfu’, comfort women from home, have already served beyond the point of exhaustion, so this night we’re turning to the expedient of forcing local Filipino women into service. So, you have anticipated our needs well, Sergeant. Your American nurses will be a welcome addition.”
“Glad to be of service,” intoned Kubo, affecting a slight bow.
“Now, in a few minutes,” continued Sakamoto, “the Filipina sluts and your nurses will be brought in. They’ll not be willing, so my men will secure them to those tables, positioned on their backsides in such a way as to receive the attentions of our brave men most efficiently. You requested an opportunity for you and your men to be among the first to partake. Tell me now, before we open the doors to our soldiers, who have been waiting so patiently outside, what your preference might be. Am I correct in assuming that would be one of the American nurses?”
“Yes ... there is one in particular, but I’d prefer not to be first in line, mind you. I’ll allow a couple of our brave soldiers to precede me ... to soften her up for me, so to speak.”
“Ahhh ... of course. I will see to it. Now, let’s bring in the women, shall we?”
*********
The double doors were thrown suddenly open, swinging on their hinges and hitting the side walls with a loud bang.
Betty screamed. All the women recoiled in terror. Spurred on by their handlers, who now wielded bamboo batons, the frantic women were forced to squeeze en masse through the opening into the room beyond ... some stumbling and falling to their hands and knees, others falling over them to sprawl on the floor ... all ending up in a tangled heap of arms, legs and naked flesh.
Roughly disentangled and forced to their feet, each of them was dragged or shepherded over to the waiting line of tables.
Barb was one of those who went sprawling, landing on the floor a distance beyond and free of the others. As she struggled to rise, strong hands took hold of her by the arms, and carried her face down, knees dragging on the floor, over to the line of tables, where she was lifted, flipped over in mid-air, and tossed down hard on a table, her back to the wood.
Both of her arms were immediately extended upward to the right and left of her head, cords wrapped tightly around her wrists and secured to large nails protruding from the table top. She lay stretched out, her butt resting on the very edge of the table top, her legs dangling over its side.
She blinked repeatedly to clear her vision from the shock of her head having been banged against the tabletop and from the tears that had welled up. Turning her head and glancing to her left she witnessed Natalie being bound in place alongside her. And in lifting her head, Barb could see, beyond Natalie, a long line of wailing and screaming Filipina girls in the throes of being brutally fixed in place. Natalie, appeared to be in a daze, staring blankly at the ceiling, eye glasses slightly askew, the nearest lens shattered.
Turning to her right, she witnessed two men struggling to wrestle Betty into position. Betty was putting up a good fight, actively resisting the binding of her wrists, writhing and kicking wildly, her large breasts bouncing and wobbling as she bucked and squirmed in a hopeless battle to frustrate their efforts to subdue her. Beyond Betty was a wall, which told Barb that the three of them occupied the very end of the long line of tables.
Turning her head to look down the length of her body, Barb saw the doors to the building’s front portal lobby swing open, and the rabble of Japanese soldiers she had seen queuing outside squeezing in and noisily forming into lines ... one for each woman bound to the tables. Those at the head of the lines, were wasting no time in dropping and stepping out of their baggy uniform pants.
She also recognized Kubo, being escorted across the intervening space by Sakamoto and inserted into the line directly facing her.
For a fleeting moment. Kubo’s dark eyes met hers, his look filling her with a special dread.
She quickly looked away, fixing her gaze on the twinkling glass baubles of the overhead chandelier, and repositioning her bound wrists and hands so as to clasp the hands of both Natalie and Betty in a futile gesture of reassurance.
*********
First in line and standing directly across from Barb, was Corporal Banko Hendo, holding his trousers in one hand and his already hardened penis in the other. The 19-year-old lorry driver was grinning broadly, marveling at his good fortune. He had stood in line for more than three hours for an opportunity to have a few good moments of pleasure with an ‘Anfu’, and had almost given up to go on a drunk instead, having heard rumors that the comfort station was about to close.
Yet, he had persisted and now could not believe his good fortune. For bound to that table and waiting for him, Banko, was not an Anfu, which often meant a tired old prostitute from home, but an American woman! ... an American woman lying on that table, helpless, open and ready for him!
And attractive too, he thought, as he fixated on the sight of her cunt with its invitingly pouty-lipped slit, framed between the pale contours of her slightly spread thighs and the dark haired thatch crowning her mound. Raising his gaze, he also took in her mounded white breasts, each tipped with a perkily erect nipple ... just begging for him to suck and nibble.
A sharp shove from behind broke his reverie.
All up and down the line, right and left, his comrades were already rushing to the attack, advancing on their helpless prey.
en.wikipedia.org
Different story. (Maybe here, anyway?
Did I really say that? Sorry.
