Island
Showa Year 20, Second Month, 21st Day
21 February 1945
A quiet fell across the bunker. Dust drifted from the ceiling. The
burnt-egg stench of sulfur lingered everywhere.
“Captain?”
It was a private. Takahashi, Sugita, Kanzaki, Asano, Togawa, Fukuyama, Abe
– who knew the names anymore? There had been so many names.
“Sir, the shelling has stopped. Does this mean they’re coming?”
“Yes,” he said. “It means they’re coming.”
The officer’s name was Hideki Yano and he was a captain, 145th Infantry
Regiment, 2nd Battalion, under Yasutake and Ikeda, attached to
Kuribayashi’s 109th Division.
The blockhouse was low and smelled of sulfur and shit because the men all
had dysentery from the tainted water. It was typical Imperial Army
fortification, a low bunker of concrete, reinforced over many long months,
with oak tree trunks from what had been but was no longer the island’s
only oak forest, the sand heaped over it. It had three firing slits and
behind each slit sat a Type 96 gun on a tripod, a gunner, and a couple of
loaders. Each field of fire fanned away for hundreds of yards across an
almost featureless landscape of black sand ridges and marginal vegetation.
The blockhouse was divided into three chambers, like a nautilus shell, so
that even if one or two were wiped out, the last gun could continue to
fire until the very end. It was festooned everywhere with the latest
imperative from General Kuribayashi’s headquarters, a document called
“Courageous Battle Vows,” which summed up everyone’s responsibilities to
the Sphere.
Above all else, we shall dedicate ourselves to the defense of this island.
We shall grasp bombs, charge the enemy tanks and destroy them.
We shall infiltrate into the midst of the enemy and annihilate them.
With every salvo we will, without fail, kill the enemy.
Each man will make it his duty to kill ten of the enemy before dying.
“I am scared, sir,” said the private.
“I am too,” said Yano.
Outside, the captain’s small empire continued. Six pits with Nambu guns in
each, each gun supported by gunner, loader, and two or three riflemen
flanked the empire to left and right. In further spider holes were martyrs
with rifles. No escape for them; they knew they were dead already. They
lived only to kill those ten Americans before they gave their lives up in
sacrifice. Those men had it the worst. In here, no shell could penetrate.
The concrete was four feet thick, riven with steel rods. Out there a naval
shell from the offshore fleet could turn a man to shreds in a second. If
the shell landed precisely, no one would have time for a death poem.
Now that the attack was upon them, the captain became energized. He shook
off the months of torpor, the despair, the terrible food, the endless
shitting, the worries. Now, at last, glory approached.
Except of course he no longer believed in glory. That was for fools. He
believed only in duty.
He was not a speech maker. But now he ran from position to position,
making sure each gun was properly cocked and aimed, the loaders stood
ready with fresh ammunition strips, the riflemen crouched to pick off the
errant demon American.
“Captain?”
A boy pulled him aside.
“Yes?” What was the boy’s name? He could not remember this one either. But
these were all good boys, Kagoshima boys, as the 145th was drawn from
Kyushu, the home of Japan’s best soldiers.
“I am not afraid to die. I am eager to die for the emperor,” said the boy,
a superior private.
“That is our duty. You and I, we are nothing. Our duty is all.”
But the boy was agitated.
“I am afraid of flames. I am so afraid of the flames. Will you shoot me if
I am engulfed in fire?”
They all feared the flamethrowers. The hairy beasts were dishonorable.
They chopped gold teeth from dead Japanese, they bleached Japanese skulls
and turned them into ashtrays and sent them home, they killed the Japanese
not decently, with gun and sword – they hated the blade! – but so often
from miles out with the big naval shells, with the airplanes, and then
when they got in close, they used the horrible hoses that squirted flaming
gasoline and roasted the flesh from a man’s bones, killing him slowly. How
could a warrior die honorably in flames?
“Or the sword, Captain. I beg you. If I burn, behead me.”
“What is your name?”
“Sudo. Sudo from Kyushu.”
“Sudo from Kyushu. You will not die in flames. That I promise you. We are
samurai!”
That word samurai still stiffened the spine of every man. It was pride, it
was honor, it was sacrifice. It was worth more than life. It was what a
man needed to be and would die to be. He had known it his whole life; he
had yearned for it, as he yearned for a son who would live up to it.
“Samurai!” said the boy fervently, now reassured, for he believed it.
Able Company caught primary assault. It was simply Able’s turn, and
Charlie and Item and Hotel would offer suppressive fire and flanking
maneuvers and handle artillery coordination, but it was Able’s turn to go
first. Lead the way. Semper fi, all that fine bullshit.
There was a problem, however. There was always a problem, this was
today’s: Able’s CO was shaky. He was new to the 28th and rumors had it
that a connected father had gotten his son the command. His name was
Culpepper and he was a college boy from some fancy place who talked a
little like a woman. It wasn’t anything anybody could put a finger on, not
homo or anything, he just wasn’t somehow like the other officers. He was
fancy, somehow, from fancy places, fancy houses, fancy parents. Was
Culpepper up to it? Nobody knew, but the blockhouse had to go or Battalion
would be hung up all day here and the big guns on Suribachi would continue
to shatter the beachhead. So Colonel Hobbs assigned his battalion’s first
sergeant, Earl Swagger, to go along with Captain Culpepper that morning.
“Culpepper, you listen up to the first sergeant. He’s old breed. He’s been
around. He’s hit a lot of beaches. He’s the best combat leader I have, you
understand.”
“Yes sir,” said Culpepper.
The colonel drew Earl aside.
“Earl, you help Culpepper. Don’t let him freeze, keep his boys moving. I
hate to do this to you, but someone’s got to get them boys up the hill and
you’re the best I’ve got.”
“I’ll get ’em up, sir,” said Swagger, who looked like he was about 140
percent United States Marine Corps, chapter and verse, a sinewy string
bean of a man, ageless in the sergeant way, a vet of the ‘Canal, Tarawa,
and Saipan and, someone said, Troy, Thermopylae, Agincourt, and the Somme.
They said nobody could shoot a Thompson gun like the first sergeant. He’d
fought the Japs in China before the war, it was said.
Swagger was from nowhere. He had no hometown, no memories he shared, no
stories of the good old days, as if he had no good old days. It was said
he’d married a gal last time home, on some kind of bond tour for the
citizens back there, and everybody said she’s a looker, but he never
pulled pictures or talked much about it. He was all guile, energy, and
focus, seemingly indestructible but one of those professionals with what
some would call a gleam in his eye who could talk any boy or green
lieutenant through anything. He was a prince of war, and if he was doomed,
he didn’t know it, or much care about it.
Culpepper had a plan.
Swagger didn’t like it.
“Begging the captain’s pardon, it’s too complicated. You’ll end up with
your people all running around not sure of what to do while the Japs sit
there and shoot. I wouldn’t break Able down by squads but by platoons, I’d
keep a good base of fire going, and I’d get my flamethrowers off on the
right, try and work ’em in close that way. The flamethrowers, sir, those
are the key.”
“I see,” said the young man, pale and thin and grave and trying so hard.
“I think the men are capable -”
“Sir, once the Japs see us coming, it’s going to be a shit storm out
there. They are tough little bastards, and believe you me, they know what
they are doing. If you expect men to remember maneuver patterns keyed to
landmarks, you will be disappointed. It has to be simple, hard, basic, and
not much to remember, or the Japs will shoot your boys down like toads on
a flat rock. The important goddamn thing is to get them flamethrowers in
close. If it was me, I’d send the best blowtorch team up this draw to the
right” – they looked at a smudged map at the command post a few hundred
yards back – “with a BAR and a tommy-gunner as cover, your best NCO
running the show. I’d hold your other team back. Meanwhile, you pound away
from your base of fire. Get the bazookas involved. Them gun slits is tiny
but a bazooka rocket through one is something the Japs will notice. Sir,
maybe you ought to let me run the flamethrower team.”
But the colonel said, “Earl will want to lead. Just let him advise,
Captain. I need him back this afternoon.”
“But -” the young captain protested.
“Sergeant Tarsky is a fine man and a fine NCO. You let him move some
people off on the left when we go. He’s got to get a lot of fire going,
and the people here in front, they’ve got to be working their weapons too.
I need a lot of covering fire. I’ll take the blowtorch team up the right.
The Japs will be hidden in monkey holes, but I can spot ’em. I know where
to look. So the BAR man can hose ’em down from outside their range. We’ll
get in close and burn ’em out, then get up there and fry that pillbox.”
Culpepper hesitated a second, realized this smart, tough, duty-crazed
hillbilly from some dead-end flyspeck south of perdition nobody had ever
heard of was dead right, and saw that his own prissy ego meant nothing out
there.
“Let’s do it, First Sergeant.”
The Type 92s fired 7.7 mm tracer. White-hot bolts of illumination cut
through the mist and the dust. Through the gun slit, you could not see
men, not really – but you could sense them, maneuvering a foot at a time
through the same chaos. Where the bullets struck, they lifted clouds of
black sand.
“There,” said the captain, pointing, and the gunner cranked his windage to
the right, the finned barrel revolved on its mesh of gears, and the gun
rocked, spent cartridges spilled, the tracer lashed, and in the vapors
shapes stumbled and went down amid the stench of sulfur.
“Sir,” someone yelled from the leftmost gun chamber.
Holding his sword so it would not clatter, the captain ran through the
connecting tunnel.
“Yes?”
“Sir, Yamaki says he saw men moving off on the left. Just a flash of them
moving directly away from our position.” Gun smoke filled the room, thin
and acrid, eating at nasal tissues, tearing up eyes.
“Flamethrowers?”
“I couldn’t see, sir.”
Well, it had to be. The American commander wouldn’t move his people
directly at the guns. The hairy beasts never did that; they didn’t have
the stomach and they weren’t eager to die. They would die if necessary,
but they weren’t hungry for it. Glorious death meant nothing to them.
The captain tried to think it out.
He’d either go to his left or right, and you’d think he’d go to his left.
There was more cover, the vegetation was thicker, and it was hard to bring
direct fire because the ridge was steeper. You were mostly in danger from
grenades, but the Americans didn’t fear the Japanese grenades, because
they were so underpowered and erratic.
The captain tried to feel his opponent. His imagination of a white man was
someone impossibly big and hairy and pink. He conceived of a cowboy or a
ghost, but he knew there’d be intelligence guiding it. The Japanese had
learned the hard way over the years that the Americans may not have had
honor but they had intelligence. They weren’t stupid, they weren’t
cowards, and there was an endless supply of them.
It came down to left or right? He knew the answer: the right. He’d go to
his right. He’d send the flamethrowers up that way because it was less
obvious: there wasn’t much cover, he’d run into spider holes, but he had
the skill to overcome the spider holes. It seemed more dangerous, but a
smart hand would have the advantage if he knew how to use terrain and was
aggressive.
“I’ll take care of it. You men, keep firing. You won’t see whole targets,
you’ll see shapes. Fire on shapes. Be samurai!”
“Samurai!”
The captain ran back to the central chamber.
“The little gun,” he ordered. “Quickly.”
A sergeant brought him the submachine gun called the Type 100, an 8 mm
weapon whose central design had been stolen from the Germans. It had a
wooden stock, a ventilated barrel, and a magazine fitted horizontally to
the left from the breech. They were prizes; there were never enough of
them to go around. What we could have done with a million of them! We’d be
in New York today! The captain had to lobby General Kuribayashi personally
to get one assigned to his position.
He threw on a bandolier hung with pouches full of grenades and spare
magazines, buckling it tight to his body. Carefully, he disconnected his
sword from his belt, laying it aside.
“I want to ambush the flamethrower attack. I’ll intercept them well beyond
our lines. Give me covering fire.”
He turned, nodded to a private, who unlatched the heavy steel door at the
rear of the blockhouse, and scrambled out.
“What’s your name, son?”
“MacReedy, First Sergeant.”
“Can you shoot that thing?” Earl said, indicating the sixteen pounds of
automatic rifle the boy held.
“Yes, First Sergeant.”
“How ’bout you, son? Can you keep him loaded and hot?”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” said MacReedy’s ammo bearer, laden with bandoliers
of BAR mags.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m squirming up the ridge. I’m
going to check out the draw. When I see a monkey hole, I’m going to put
tracer on it. You’re with me in a good prone. Where I put tracer, you put
five rounds of ball thirty. Hold tight, stay on my forty-five tracer.
Tracer won’t go through them logs the Japs use as revetment, but the
thirty will, ’cause it’s moving three times as fast. Your buddy there’s
going to feed you mags as you run dry. He’ll switch them on you. You got
that, son?”
“Got it, First Sergeant,” said the assistant gunner.
“Now you blowtorch guys, you hang back. We got to clear this out before I
can get you up on the ridge and you can get to work. Okay?”
There was a mumble of reluctant assent from his loose confederation of
troops clustered just below the ridge, a couple of low, “Yes, First
Sergeant.”
“And another thing. Out here, where there’s Japs, I’m Earl. Forget all the
First Sergeant bullshit. Got it?”
With that Earl began his long squirm. He crawled through volcanic ash and
black sand. He crawled in a fog of sulfur-stinking dust that floated up to
his nose and tongue, layering him with grit. He held his Thompson tight
like a woman, felt the two BAR gunners with him close, and watched as Jap
tracer flicked insolently above. Now and then a mortar round landed, but
mostly it was dust in the air, cut with flecks of light, so brief, so fast
you weren’t sure you really saw it.
He was happy.
In war, Earl put everything behind him. His dead, raging father no longer
screamed at him, his sullen mother no longer drifted away, he was no
longer the sheriff’s boy, hated by so many others because they so feared
his father; he was nobody but First Sergeant and he was happy. He had the
United States Marine Corps as a father and a mother now, and the Corps had
embraced him and loved him and nurtured him and made him a man. He would
not let it down and he would fight to the death for its honor.
Earl got to the crest of the little ridge and poked his head up. Before
him he saw a fold in the sandy soil that led up to the blankness of a
higher ridgeline, a rill that was a foothill to Suribachi, which rose
behind them, blocking all view of the sea. It was 2/28’s job to circle
around the volcano, cut the mountain off from resupply, then inch up it
and take out the mortars, the artillery emplacements, the artillery
spotters, and the spider holes and pillboxes that dotted its scabrous
surface. It had to be done one firefight at a time, over a long day’s
dying.
The landscape of the draw seemed empty, a random groove cut in the black
sand, clotted with clump grass and bean vines. The odd eucalyptus bush
stood out amid the desolation.
Once he would have led men up and all would have died. But like his peers,
he had learned the craft of war.
He looked now for gnarled root groupings in the clump grass and eucalypti,
for patches of lemongrass, for small, stunted oak trees, for the Japanese
had a genius for digging into them, for building small, one-man forts,
impregnable to artillery but at the same time inescapable. There was no
such thing as a back door. Thus they would die to kill. Retreat and
surrender were terms they did not comprehend.
“You set up, MacReedy?”
“Yes, Earl.”
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The 47th Samurai
by Stephen Hunter
Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Hunter.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Simon & Schuster
Copyright © 2007
Stephen Hunter
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7432-3809-0
