In any case, Deke could certainly sympathize with how these prisoners must feel now, with freedom snatched from them at the last instant. It didn’t sit right with him.
He wasn’t the only one.
“What the hell is happening here?” Honcho wondered aloud. “This wasn’t the deal. They’re supposed to let the prisoners go. Dammit, Oatmire, go talk to him.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Tanigawa now stood at the head of the Japanese formation, calmly watching as Captain Oatmire approached him again. This time there was no charade about the need for interpreters. It had already become clear that the officer spoke English.
“Major Tanigawa, what the hell is going on?” Oatmire demanded.
Tanigawa gave him a cold smile. “Insurance policy,” he said. “I think that is the expression that you Americans would use.”
“That wasn’t the agreement,” Oatmire complained. He felt his temper spike and struggled to keep it under control, knowing that it wouldn’t make the situation any better. “We didn’t talk about any damn insurance policies.”
Tanigawa just shrugged. “Do you wish for the release of the prisoners or not? I have let most of them go. These few will be released once we reach our destination.”
Oatmire marched back to Lieutenant Steele with the bad news. “I hate to say it, but these Japs have us stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Honcho said. “I would’ve said they had our nuts in a vise.”
“Well, that too,” Oatmire admitted. “Dammit, I feel like my first hostage negotiation didn’t go so well. I must have missed something.”
“Captain, the only mistake you made was trusting these lying Nips in the first place,” Steele said.
“No kidding,” Oatmire said, sounding disgusted.
“Not your fault, you know. You were simply making a good-faith effort. I’ve got to say, I don’t like it any better than you do, but at this point, I don’t think we have much of a choice except to go along with what Tanigawa wants. We’ll escort them to wherever they want to go, and then we’ll see that the prisoners are released.”
“All right,” Oatmire agreed. Although he outranked the older man, he wasn’t about to order around the lieutenant or his veteran combat patrol. “Sounds like the only choice we have.”
“I’d suggest that we just keep one thing in mind,” Steele added.
“What’s that, lieutenant?”
“The Japanese have already lied to us, so chances are that they’ll do it again. Knowing that, let’s both of us be on our toes in dealing with them.”
Right before they moved out, Sergeant Inaba barked an order and several of the Japanese soldiers fixed bayonets. Their intent seemed to be to use the bayonets to prod their prisoners along. If anyone was too slow or caused trouble, such as trying to make a run for it, the Japanese clearly meant to stab them in the back.
The icing on the cake was a soldier who carried a Japanese flag next to Major Tanigawa at the front of the column.
“It looks like they’re having a damn parade,” Deke muttered.
“All they need is a marching band,” Philly agreed. “Just who the hell do they think they are?”
“They’re proud bastards, I’ll give them that,” Deke replied.
With the Japanese now formed up in marching order, Patrol Easy and the Filipinos formed a loose ring around them, and both groups moved out into the city. Tanigawa had not announced his destination, but from the pace he set, it was clear that he knew where he was leading his men.
The surrounding city was a mess, a labyrinth of burned-out cars everywhere, along with broken buildings and scattered bodies, mostly of Filipino civilians, not to mention a few dead dogs. Overall, it was far from a pleasant or encouraging sight. The smell of the dead in the warm sun mixed with the odor of raw sewage and the acrid stink of burned rubber. It all made Deke long for the greenery of the jungle. This manmade jungle was far worse.
As the soldiers moved through the city, the only living beings they passed seemed to be other combat troops, mainly American soldiers and a handful of Filipino guerrillas. They watched the procession with curiosity and puzzled expressions. For the Japanese, having an American escort forming a loose ring around them had proved to be very smart, because they would not have lasted long otherwise, surrounded by trigger-happy GIs. Even with the hostages, their chances of making it so much as a block wouldn’t have been very good.
“Ain’t this a hell of a thing,” Deke said as they walked along beside the Japanese. “Who would ever think we’d be babysitters for a bunch of enemy troops?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me,” Philly agreed. “You know that we’re just going to have to fight these sons of bitches later, and if not us, then some other poor bastards will.”
“I don’t think we have much choice,” Deke said, nodding at the prisoners. They walked with their heads down, picking their way through the rubble. If any of them slowed down too much, Inaba or one of the other Japanese was quick to shout at them. So far they had refrained from jabbing the prisoners with bayonets. Even Big Mike appeared cowed, walking along with his head bowed. They could see him plainly because he was literally a head taller than the surrounding Japanese.
Tagging along with Patrol Easy was the prisoner’s son, who had insisted on following them. The nightmarish cityscape they passed through was no place for a young kid.
“I wish to hell that kid would go home,” Deke said. “He doesn’t have any business being out here.”
“If that was your father being herded along, would you go home?” Philly wondered.
“I don’t reckon I would.”
“There you go. What makes you think that kid is any different?”
The boy appeared to sense his tenuous position because he kept well away from the soldiers. He seemed to be afraid that if he got too close, they would yell at him to go home. However, the shattered streets they were passing through wouldn’t have been safe for him to travel alone. They began passing more and more civilian bodies, including women and children. Several of the injuries to the women and their torn or missing clothes indicated that they had been molested. They passed the body of a young woman, her shirt ripped open, revealing that one of her breasts had been cut off.
“Who the hell does that?” Philly wondered.
Nobody had a good answer for him. Juana went over and tugged the young woman’s shirt closed, then put a handkerchief over her face to keep off the flies. It was as much dignity as she could give the young woman in these circumstances.
It was becoming clear that the Japanese were killing anyone they could, including Westerners. Not all the bodies belonged to Filipino civilians. One of the dead appeared to be a heavyset middle-aged Caucasian man wearing linen suit pants and a dress shirt sliced to ribbons by bayonet cuts. The shirt had once been white but was now soaked in uneven stripes of blood. This victim appeared out of place alongside the others.
“Another American?” Philly wondered aloud.
“If he was running free around the city, instead of being a prisoner, he must be a German,” Honcho said. “Allies with the Japs. They’ve corralled everyone else.”
“Good riddance, then,” Philly said.
There had been a surprising number of Germans in Manila, most of them there in some kind of business capacity. There were also a small number of German Jews who had escaped Nazi Germany just in time, scattering to whatever far corner of the world would take them. The Japanese had not cared about their religion and consequently considered these refugees to be on equal footing with the other Germans. The presence of a German population was a problem that would have to be dealt with once the city was secure. Right now, US forces had more immediate concerns.
The heat beat down, humidity seeming to add extra effort to every motion. Deke forced himself to stay alert. There was no telling when the enemy might try something. Also, there were more than a few trigger-happy GIs wandering the streets who would have been happy enough to avenge the death of a buddy by opening fire on the Japanese soldiers. If someone from their own side opened fire, Deke wanted plenty of warning. He also wasn’t going to lift a finger to defend the Japanese if that happened, although it wouldn’t bode well for the prisoners within the enemy ranks.
“The Japs say they want those prisoners as insurance, but what do you really think they want with those women nurses?” Deke wondered, having seen what the marauding enemy had done to the Filipino women.
“The thought crossed my mind. I just hope to hell they don’t kill the rest of the prisoners as soon as they get where they’re going,” Philly replied. “You can’t trust these damn Japanese.”
“Don’t let the boy hear you say that. He’s upset enough as it is.”
After the boy stumbled over a bayoneted body and stared down at it in horror, Lieutenant Steele waved him over. “Stick close to me, kid. We don’t want to lose you in all this mess.”
Shaken by what he had seen, Roddy did as he was told and did not stray far from the lieutenant’s side. As for the boy’s father, Big Mike was too far away to communicate with his son. Once or twice when he did try to speak up, he only earned himself a rifle butt slammed painfully into the small of his back. That was better than the point of a bayonet, at least. But where the Japanese were concerned, he might be pushing his luck. It was clear they had little patience for their prisoners.
Deke had to hand it to the Japanese — they were quite disciplined, marching in tight order while still managing to herd the hostages along. There were a dozen hostages, mostly men, but among them, Deke counted three women who looked to be in their late thirties or even their forties. They had a no-nonsense appearance, not about to be confused with beauty queens, although one of the younger nurses had on a touch of lipstick. All three wore nurses’ uniforms, and he was amazed at their bravery.