Sukimoko

Sixth Installment

Publication date: December 8th, 2024
Copyright 2024

By Dean Adams Curtis

 

CHAPTER 28

Persephone's Room

“Stop struggling,” he whispered from behind her, his breath smelling of garlic, “I’m an American.”

He was a spy catcher. “U.S. Army.”

He had her wrapped tightly in his arms with one of his hands over her mouth. He thought that she looked a bit like Katherine Hepburn.

“I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. Do not scream. Okay?”

She nodded her head. He uncovered her mouth. “What do you want?”

“I’m on a mission,” said the soldier, who was of Navajo heritage.

Persephone Bloom stopped struggling. The man’s grasp on her loosened. She spun from his hold and stared eye-to-eye at the intruder in her home in Malabon, just northwest of Manila, near the Manila Bay on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines. She had learned from her strong mother how to stand her ground face-to-face with her brothers and the other Dayton, Ohio boys and men. The man before her, who looked like he was an American Indian, had already easily disarmed her of a small knife and had readily enwrapped her, a state she had no wish to repeat being in. Still, she stood strong. “What does that have to do with me?”

On a moonless night two nights prior, U.S. Army spy catcher Kim Chee had parachuted into clouds to land with his small team in the mountains east of Manila. He had done so due to actionable intel on the location of Imai, a brilliant and ruthless Japanese spy, a man who ran a web of agents he’d woven into the fabric of Philippine island society in preparation for invasion.

As a U.S. Army specialist school grad, Kim Chee was fluent in both Japanese and Korean. His cover in country was as a conscripted Korean private in the Japanese Imperial Army. He had his real name on the forged Japanese Army Korean conscript papers he carried because he knew it sounded Korean. He had already assessed his cover in several encounters with Japanese soldiers. It had proven effective. He always added a kimchee joke about his name as he pretended to eat food.

“I’m trailing someone,” Kim told her. “He’s on his way.”

“Who?” she asked. “Why is he coming?

“A Japanese intelligence officer,” Kim answered. He knew this because the United States had broken the code used by the Japanese military. Kim was in an elite platoon of intelligence officers, signals intel, and codebreaker guys stationed on a Pacific atoll a very long plane trip away. Kim knew that the U.S. military could not do anything to save the Philippines from the Japanese occupation, not while the Japanese Navy controlled the Western Pacific. But guys like him could bite back a bit, perhaps rabidly, as he and his team hoped to do. “Your husband is more than just an Ohio elevator salesman bringing elevators to Asia. He's been dealing with the Chinese Filipinos, brokering shipments of opium to Ohio.”

From the darkness of her second floor bedroom they saw a black Ford sedan pull up outside her walled front garden gate. “There he is,” Kim stated.”

"Best you forget I told you that, and that I am here. I’ll disappear, but be nearby." The U.S. army specialist spycatcher left her bedroom and hid at a stragegic position in the house he had previously found. In addition to his U.S. Army intel mission, he had received a last minute message from D.C., from her Ohio Senator father, “Bring her home.”

A trio of urgent knocks rattled her metal gate.

CHAPTER 29

Prison Yard

“Bakit?” five-year-old Emiliano whispered to his eleven-year-old brother Francisco in the slight moonlight illuminating their room. The word sounded like bucket and meant ‘why?’

The brothers shared the room with their mother, Maria, who was soundly asleep on the other side of a sheet wall. The room was above Sukimoko, their sari-sari shop in Malabon, on the wet market street down the way and around the corner from the house of the American woman who looked like Katherine Hepburn.

Emil wondered if he should do as his brother had insisted. What his brother demanded was scary. He had asked Emiliano to accompany him to hoist a basket of food over a barbed wire fence erected around a Japanese prison yard. It was the place where the Japanese were putting Filipinos who had resisted their invasion. Emil and Francisco had watched the hasty construction of the prison yard near the beer brewery on a rise within a marshy river estuary at the confluence of Polo and Tullahan rivers.

“Because,” Francisco said. “The Japanese have Tito Renee inside and he sent a message through Tito Arnell.” His brother went on about how his uncle Arnell had gotten the word from someone, but Emil was not listening. He did not want to do it, no matter who got word to who. “Tito Renee is gutum (hungry),” his brother implored him.

“Magagalit si Nanay,” Emil whispered. ‘Mother will be angry.’

“Wag sabihin Nanay,” Francisco whispered back. ‘Don’t tell Mother.’

On the other side of the sheet wall, Maria stirred in her sleep and made a sound. Her son Francisco almost put his hand over her son Emiliano’s mouth, but her youngest grabbed his older brother’s arm. Francisco put up a finger of his other hand to his lips, then showed his palm to Emiliano who let go of his arm. Quietly, he uncovered a basket of food that he had carefully bound with rope.

The brothers slipped from Sukimoko. As they walked down their street, lit by a sliver-of-silver Moon, Francisco quietly explained to Emiliano what he called the details.

 “The yard is guarded by Korean conscripts,” Francisco explained to his brother. Emil did not know what a Korean or a conscript were. “I did it already last night with Tito Claro,” his brother assured. The boys encountered nobody, then boarded a little skiff style boat and pushed off across a marsh. Both of them worked the skiff pole together to move the water craft. But as they approached behind the prison yard they needed to keep the skiff in reeds to stay hidden because three guards were there drinking something and laughing. The boys did not know whether the men were speaking Korean or Japanese, as they had never heard either language spoken before. Finally, one man urinated. Then the three men left.

Francisco and Emiliano used the long skiff pole to hoist the basket over the fence, then the fence to pull it from the pole. When the basket hit the ground of the dark prison yard the boys saw a figure inside running to get it and then disappear. The boys had time to get the skiff back out into the reeds, but a bright light began to sweep the area where they had been. On one swing, te light it hit their skiff pole. A single gunshot was fired in their direction.

Both boys heard the bullet pass by them in the reeds.

Due to a nightmare about her boys, Maria awoke suddenly in her sleep in her room above Sukimoko. She got up and walked to her sheet wall. There, she pushed a sheet aside. She was happy to see that her two boys were sleeping soundly. Curiously, she smelled body odor. She knew that her boys had both bathed before going to bed. Perhaps, Maria reasoned, they’d also had some particularly bad dreams.

Chapter 30

Corregidor Dive

The next day Japanese pilot, Hideki Shingo, looked down at Corregidor Island.

Corregidor sat in the mouth of Manila Bay. It guarded the shipping route to and from Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. Hideki knew the city was already under Japanese control by the invasion force that had landed at Lingayen Gulf three weeks before. However, he knew, as did Japanese High Command, which had ordered waves of dive-bombers toward Corregidor, that the island was America’s last stronghold in Asia.

From their Formosa Island air base, Hideki‘s wing of dive-bombers had flown over five hundred miles in five hours, armed with the biggest bombs they could carry under their wings. He checked his fuel supply. He had a little over half a tank of gas left. He breathed in deeply through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth.  

He banked his plane. So too did the other pilots of planes in his attack formation. Their attack had begun. Hideki dropped the nose of his plane toward his primary target, big American cannons, a battery on the West side of the island, one of a dozen big cannon batteries that were firing huge shells at Japanese ships. The big American cannons had sunk a Japanese destroyer and damaged other ships that attempted to enter Manila Harbor or to get close to Corregidor.

As the needle of his elevation gauge fell below two hundred feet, anti-aircraft shells began exploding around the plane. He began a prayer to his ancestors. An explosion burst before him. He accepted that he would then join his ancestors. But his plane flew through the blast unscathed.

Moments later, his primary target was clearly in his bombsight’s targeting crosshairs, Hideki released the middle of his three bombs, the one mounted under the plane’s fuselage. Thereafter, he pulled his plane out of its dive and vectored toward his secondary target, another cannon battery. When he had it centered in his bombsight he released his remaining two bombs from under his plane’s wings.

Corregidor disappeared from below him. Over open water, he pulled up hard and his newly unweighted plane willingly accepted the challenge of a forty five degree climb skyward through more anti-aircraft shell explosions. Each explosion left a black puff of smoke, but none of the explosions damaged his plane.

When the needle of his elevation gauge read five hundred feet, Hideki leveled the nose of his plane on the horizon.

He looked to his left. The other planes of his attack group began to arrive at his altitude. Ichi, ni, san, yon, go. Everyone was alive but several were in planes that had sheet metal blown off by explosions of anti-aircraft shells and they were all in planes blackened by proximity to the explosions.

He gazed to his right. From his vantage point high in the sky, he saw the magnificent Bataan Peninsula, a two volcano landmass that stretched North to South and helped form and embrace Manila Bay. Hideki followed the prearranged plan for his flight along the West coastline of the peninsula as if he were once again headed toward the Japanese airbase in Formosa, but then he banked right toward a new runway, toward the formerly-American Clark Airfield, for the first landing for planes there, after Japanese repair.

Chapter 31

Bataan’s End

The Japanese planes that were focused that day on dive-bombing Corregidor Island gave a break from what had been relentless day and night attacks from Japanese planes on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula.

On that remaining piece of the peninsula’s real estate, holding a stalemate with the Japanese, were the remaining eighty thousand U.S. Army and the Filipino Scouts of those who had been deployed variously around the northern Philippine island of Luzon back four months before, back on December 8^th, 1941, the day when the Japanese had invaded the Philippines. Since then, the Americans and Filipinos had relentlessly fought the Japanese invaders side-by-side all around the island of Luzon, while slowly, battle-by-battle, week after week, getting pushed down to the peninsula’s end, where the Japanese dive-bombing of Corregidor Island out in the entrance to Manila Harbor was in view for any with a view of it to see.  

With the American and Filipino fighters on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula were five thousand civilians. On that day at the start of April 1942, Juanita and her friend were among them. They were Filipinas who had also taken up arms in battle against the invaders of their country and had been swept along in constant battle day after day.

The good news was that her friend had found her brother. But he was badly wounded. He lay on a cot not conscious being cared for in a U.S. Army medical tent near the front line beyond the range of Japanese artillery. The two young women sat on either side of him. Conversation between the two was limited. It was enough that Juanita was there. After some time, Juanita reached out and put a hand on her arm. “Ako ay gutum.” She was hungry. Her friend nodded. Juanita left her.

Juanita entered a food tent. It was serving beans and rice, along with chunks of carabao meat. After she waited in a line a ladle of that combo landed on a tin plate Juanita held. She looked up to see she was eye-to-eye with Rocky, the rock-jawed, just-right-height American who had ladled it.

“You never told me your name,” Rocky stated.

“Juanita,” she replied.

“I am pleased to see you again, Juanita,” Rocky said.

“I am pleased to see you again, Rocky,” Juanita replied. He smiled broadly.

He watched her blush then remembered to keep serving. She found a place to sit and eat. She kept him in sight. His eyes kept alighting on her. After the food was gone, Rocky found a spot to sit near her.

When she asked him where he was from, he filled her with stories of his upbringing in the United States. Rocky was from Jefferson, Georgia and had gone to college in Athens, Georgia. He had been more interested in boxing, racing cars, and flying planes than college classes. Those interests had led him after a few steps to enlistment in the 27^th Aerial Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps based in Savannah, Georgia.  Because he was in the Communications section of the 27^th, he had been the first to see the coded message ordering Operation Plum, the deployment of the 27^th to the Philippines on November 7^th, 1941. Rocky told her that it had taken his group most of November to cross the Pacific. He said they were still putting planes together and dealing with missing parts two weeks after arriving when the Japanese attacked. “Our Bombardment Group never got a chance to do any bombardment.”

That day’s sunset had seemed special to Juanita, seeing as she had spent it hearing Rocky’s stories. She marveled for a few moments that they had met at all and had met again. Exhausted, well-fed, and feeling secure, Juanita drifted off to sleep leaning against a tree. Rocky stayed near her as she slept and stayed awake digging a foxhole. Good thing he did.

That night, to waxing moonlight, planes from a Japanese aircraft carrier in the South China Sea began dive-bombing the bottom of Bataan.

“Juanita!” she awoke hearing Rocky shout her name.

She saw the top half of him waving to her. “Get over here!” Rocky shouted. She turned to see a bomb explode, then another explode after even closer. Their proximity immediately propelled her toward Rocky who caught her and shielded her with his body in his foxhole as a series of additional explosions of bombs from the Japanese dive-bombers rocked them.

Sometime after, Rocky unshielded her and helped her to stand in the foxhole. Before them burned the black charred trunk of the tree Juanita had slept against earlier. The mess tent where she and Rocky had reconnected was gone. Around them they heard moans.

“See who we can help?” Juanita asked. Rocky nodded and made a footstep out of his hands that she stepped on. He boosted her out of the foxhole. They located two individuals who were moaning. One was an American soldier who Rocky knew, and the other was an old Filipina. Juanita tied ripped cloth bandages around three limbs where the old woman was bleeding. She and Rocky both noted to the wounded individuals that the medical tent was just down the road and got them up and walking with their assistance toward that destination.

A gray predawn sky after moonset was above the med tent’s former location. On the ground were twisted and blackened remains of carts and cots and patients. Juanita looked for any sign of her friend or her friend’s brother among charred corpses,  “We keep going,” Rocky stated simply. Nobody said or did anything different. They kept going.

Rocky was right to have kept them going, as it turned out the front line had shifted southward slightly during the overnight chaos caused by the bombing runs. As dawn came the four were again among the living. Rocky and Juanita transferred their wounded to a medical tent. There, Juanita looked again for her friend and her brother. Not seeing them, she knew they must both have died.

Rocky found some of his guys from the 27^th with radio gear in a ton-and-a-half truck.

“The food is gone,” they explained to Rocky. “The area commander wants us to take our truck to the rear and load up on food for the front.”

“What’s the overall situation?” Juanita heard Rocky ask them.

 “No changes in the Japanese lines,” she heard the answer. “They’re waiting for us to starve to death.”

Next, the 27^th guys unloaded the radio gear that was on the truck into what they called a temporary communications center. Then Rocky drove, with Juanita seated next to him, on a seat they shared with a Sargeant Baker, who Rocky called “Sargeant Super-duper Supply Scrounger,” headed to the rear to load up on food for the front.

They crossed a sturdy steel bridge across the Lamao River that was South of the U.S. 27^th and Filipino front line. Rocky, skillfully as a race car driver, navigated the winding jungle road, carefully passing wounded and retreating men, until at midday they had made it to the supply depot at the most southern tip of the peninsula.

“Do you see these stripes?” Sargeant Scrounger asked the lounging depot guys. “Do you see these stripes? You want the front line to hold back the Japs? I want a dozen crates of everything you’ve got loaded onto this truck, immediately! Get up and get to work! Now!”

The depot guys did so.

Rocky smiled to Juanita. “Super-duper.”

An officer of the Filipino Scouts appeared before Rocky. “I heard you just came from the front. Do you know the whereabouts of President Quezon? Is he safe?”

“President Quezon stayed in Manila until he and General MacArthur were forced to flee to Corregidor Island,” Rocky reported. “Then General MacArthur was ordered to leave and continue prosecuting the war from Australia. He and President Quezon are there now.”

 “Thank God! If the Japanese had caught President Quezon we Filipinos would have lost our greatest patriot,” the man said forcefully. “He is the only one who will be able to return the Philippines to normal after they are driven out.” Then, the Filipino Scout officer was off.

Soon after, the supply depot guys finished loading the one-and-a-half ton truck with food. Rocky pulled the heavily burdened beast out of the depot and headed back North toward the Filipino and 27^th Bombardment Group front line, the eastern flank, the right side, of the full line that stretched across the bottom of the Bataan Peninsula. They heard a man shout that the Japanese had broken through the line. They ignored the warning, as it was the most common rumor they had heard recently, followed by the one that Allied help was about to arrive.

The number of people flowing South on the road had dramatically increased. Many shouted some version of, “The Japanese are right behind us,” but Rocky’s determined forward momentum hardly wavered, whether passing a southbound person, military truck, tank, or gun carrier, he and Sargeant Scrounger repeatedly told Juanita that the front line was still strong, that it still held, and they persisted in northward travel.

They drove onto the steel bridge over the Lamao River that they had crossed earlier.

Rocky braked the truck. The three of them stared across the empty bridge twenty yards away. There, blocking their exit from the other side, was a military vehicle that faced toward them, a Japanese gun carrier. Japanese soldiers around it and were just as surprised to see a big U.S. truck across the bridge as the Americans and Juanita were to see their enemy directly before them. For a moment, nobody moved.

Then, bullets being fired from a machine gun mounted behind an armor plate at the front of the Japanese gun carrier began impacting on the bridge pavement ahead of them. A hidden Japanese machine gunner adjusted his aim up toward the truck. Sergeant Scrounger threw open the truck’s passenger door and was the first out of the cab and over the bridge’s railing. Rocky shoved Juanita out of the truck at the same time as he held her, and the pair went over the railing a moment after the sergeant.

The three did not see the large caliber machine gun bullets shatter the truck’s windshield and rip through the cab’s seatback, a wasted volley of bullets due to their absence.  They were plunging twenty feet toward a shallow, swiftly flowing river with prominent boulders.

Chapter 32

Malabon Breeze

Open, swinging in a breeze at dawn, the metal gate of his Malabon abode first alerted the Ohio elevator entrepreneur, Anthony Bloom, that something was wrong. He and Penelope never left that gate open.

The first blood he saw was on their front porch.

“Penelope!” he called as he entered the door. At first he stood not comprehending, then realized he was seeing a dead human in black trenchcoat laying face down in blood that covered their finely tiled living room floor. He gasped, then spun back out onto his porch, repulsed by the scene and a fetid iron scent in the air that he had inhaled, and vomited.

Anthony rounded his house, headed toward a back door and caught his breath, startled to come face-to-face with a carabao in the side yard munching on a mouthful of their flowers. The beast stared at the human, satisfied to remain just where he was, doing as he was, as the man went by him.

 Anthony entered his back door and in the back kitchen he saw a second dead body. Like the other dead body in the living room, it was that of a Japanese man. This man was face up, so Anthony saw that in addition to a black trench coat the corpse was clad a gray suit. The dead man’s throat had been slit. A black hat was on the concrete kitchen floor beside the deceased human in his pooled blood.

“Penelope!” Upstairs, Anthony found a third body, the corpse of a similarly dressed Japanese man whose neck was twisted in a way that the Ohio man turned away from. “Penelope!”

He checked the rest of his house. Nowhere, to his relief and confusion, did he find his wife.

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