Ch 24 - Air Raid

CHAPTER 24

AIR RAID

The remainder of our trip to the market was uneventful, except for the type of grain we received on this occasion. It was not polished rice! The grain was red! And it had the husks still in place!

“What’s this stuff?” Jimmy asked Matsie.

“Korean, good!” Matsie grinned toothily.

After our journey to the market was completed, we could hardly wait to relate our story to Freddie. At first he scoffed at our pictorial description of the contents of the bath house, but when Matsie gave his version of our adventure, Freddie was forced to admit we surely must have witnessed something very unusual. All of this was interrupted by air raid sirens shattering the quiet!

AIR RAID!

The Japanese guards erupted from their quarters and we were quickly rounded up and herded out of the gate and to the huge grain silos! It was immediately apparent that under the silos was our air raid shelter! We were able to glimpse several flights of silver-hued bombers approaching from the southeast! These great planes were quite visible, unlike the first plane that flew over Tokyo. By the time all the men were in place under the silo, the thunder of bombs began to reverberate through the huge cylinders! Some of the explosions seemed not so far away, but we learned that being confined under the silos was akin to the inside of a huge drum! I looked up at the “ceiling” of the cavity where we sat huddled, and wondered what would happen if a bomb struck this particular silo! I could visualize tons of grain thundering down upon us!

We suffered all of these horrifying visions as the raid continued.....on and on. I was told it lasted for more than two hours, but it seemed much longer! Finally all-clear sounded and we dragged our cramped bodies out from under the silos. I saw some of the men had suffered thru the raid under some of the other silos, and were emerging from the openings rubbing their backs. Once back in the camp, we proceeded to the galley and went back to work, unloading the large, straw bags of grain, and the few vegetables rationed to us at the market. It became obvious to all the bombing raids would affect the food supplies! We had received only about one quarter of our usual ration of the large radishes, plus some greens. And the substitution of the red grain for our regular rice was a shocker! Our medic cautioned us not to complain. He said the red stuff had husks, and the husks contained food value far more valuable to our needs than polished rice.

During the night of November 29th the sirens heralding the first night raid roared their mournful sounds! We were ordered to stay inside our barracks when the sirens sounded. Since there were no guards inside our barracks, I decided to climb down from my bunk, which was the third from the wall, and slip over to the large windows along the bay side of the building. Although the windows were all boarded up. When I crawled close to the window, I could see some of the action through the cracks between the boards! Some of the other men crowded in next to me, and some peeked thru the cracks visible in the other windows.

Bright, narrow beams of searchlights blinked on in the black night. There was a cold rain falling, almost icy, and I could almost visualize the people crammed inside the small, wooden houses along the streets where we rode our bicycles to the market. If the bombs created fires, the people in the target areas would have to rush into the wet, cold night to seek shelter. I felt sorrow for the people, totally ignorant of the implications of these terrible bombings! The war had finally came to roost on their country, and there was nowhere to hide!

During our travels to the work details from Omori, and to the market from this camp, it was obvious the Japanese cities were poorly prepared for the fiery holocaust that would fall upon them. This terrible retribution would probably continue until Japan was on it's knees. We had seen little refuge for the masses other than numerous, shallow bomb shelters covered with timbers. A mound of dirt covered each shelter, and even this was planted with vegetables. Little shelter these would afford the populace crammed into the huge cities of Japan!

Staring through the crack at the great beams of the searchlights, sweeping back and forth across the blackness of the night, I recalled the descriptions of the British searchlights over London. The bark of anti-aircraft guns filled the night. Just off the shore from our camp was one of the tiny islands that was hardly more than a sand spit. This and many others similar served as nothing more than gun platforms for the heavy caliber anti-aircraft guns I guessed to be five inch guns. This one was fairly near to the shore and during an air raid the shattering crack of the heavy guns sent reverberations through and around the buildings surrounding us.

A flight of the big, silvery bombers were now visible. These planes were huge! These aircraft were certainly not B-17’s! This formation consisted of nine bombers, and approached the city from the southeast. Now, as I watched, the formation began a turn to the north and then disappeared from my view. Another grouping of searchlight beams to the south illuminated more of the huge bombers, also headed for northeastern Tokyo. Heavy, rumbling explosions gently shook the barracks. The sounds seemed to emanate from somewhere west of us.

“I think they’re after the factories tonight,” one of the men muttered. Another laughed nervously,

“I hope they ain’t after this one mate!”

One of my concerns was the bombs would fall eventually on the huge grain silos so very near to our camp! After all, it was, or seemed to be, part of the food supply for the monstrous city. Fortunately, the flour mill was not on the target list this night!

“I still can’t believe they’re here!” one man exclaimed, “after all these years, they have come just as I always dreamed they would!”

I think this time was the first I realized this was really happening! For three years we had envisioned the forces of our country suddenly materializing, springing into existence to save us from the Japs! I think we had dreamed this dream for so long, we really did not believe it would ever happen. I remembered Guy Wardlaw, our room leader at Pasay School House. Often he would say, “Now you’all know the Yanks and Tanks’ll come rolling in one of these days, and we’ll all go home!”

The Yanks and Tanks! They were here! Yes, they were all over the place, dropping bombs and making life miserable for the Japanese, the enemy that had killed and maimed so many helpless American prisoners. The air action decreased outside and most of us withdrew to our bunks. I was so hyped up I was a long time going to sleep.

The following morning a massive pall of smoke and haze covered the area. Off to the south several plumes of black smoke towered up into the sky. Tokyo, and Yokohama had been sorely injured during the long raid the night before. In the distance, bells and sirens could be heard. Probably fires still burning from the bombs. When I arrived at the galley, Freddie Harris informed me we were to go quickly to the marketplace for supplies. He said the Japanese sergeant had just told him we must go before more American planes appeared. We waited for Matsumoto to make his grand entrance.

It was cold this morning and we would have to wear our coats. The coats were issued to all the POWs, and were obviously British Army overcoats, probably part of the captured loot from Hong Kong, or some other British outpost in China. Since the cold weather had arrived, the coats were welcome protection from the cold winds often whipping in over Tokyo Bay from the Pacific Ocean, and often from the northwest where the frigid air of Siberia originated. This was our first encounter with the cold winters since leaving the United States, and the medics warned us our blood was thin from the tropics and we would suffer from the cold.

I quickly found the bulky coat hampered me as I pedaled the bike along the road, but I decided I was better off hampered, than freezing and I pumped the pedals and guided the old bicycle onward. I found my hands were freezing on the cold handle bars, and I pulled the sleeves of the coat down as a substitute for gloves. Unlike bicycles in the States, these handle bars were devoid of rubber grips, and my hands stuck to the icy metal.

Our trip to the market was uneventful on this occasion. Freddie was saddened to learn the doors were drawn on the bath house, and we continued onward toward the market, exhaling our very visible breath in the clear, cold air. We found there were many people packed outside the confines of the market, but once we wended our way through the mass of people, we were forced to wait until we were summoned to the food stalls. Some of the stalls did contain a few vegetables, but most were empty! Our ration of large radishes was rather sparse, but each of our trailers received one sack of grain. We had discussed the possibility of our rations being affected by the bombing, and it was obvious our anxiety was justified. We knew we required the vegetables, and the greens. This was a hard lesson learned in prison camps located in the Philippines.

We returned to the camp without incident, and while unloading the supplies, Jimmy informed us there was talk of digging some slit trenches for protection from the bombing. He said the word was our POW leadership had talked to the Japanese Commander concerning our fear of taking cover under the silos, and had requested we dig some narrow trenches for the men.

“I’ll vote for that!”, I exclaimed, not liking the thought of residing below the tons of grain and cement with bombs sprinkling the landscape! It was obvious to all that Tokyo, and the adjacent cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama, would be recipients of many bombs from this time onward! James Mac K Sloan ventured he would be more than happy to suffer the air raids, as long as the Yanks were pouring it to the bloody Japs!

“Hear, hear!” came from Freddie the Aussie.

We three were certainly in accord on that subject! I held my cold hands near one of the fire boxes. It was cold outside and the long bike ride had been frosty!

We learned from Captain Cant, the former sea captain, that much of the destruction we had witnessed while going to and from the market, was really devastation caused by civilians clearing away the wreckage of wooden housing so prevalent in the industrial areas. The wide swaths of ruin were cleared to serve as fire breaks in hopes of stopping incendiary fires from spreading rapidly.

The Captain also told us he was blessed with having a very close friend in the German Embassy. He said his friend was German, and his friend did, at times, have the means to secrete information out to the Captain! The most recent information received by Captain Cant was that Germany’s plan to rule the world was coming apart, and Hitler’s war efforts were in dire straits! The method of the information transmittal was not revealed by the good Captain with the Van Dyke beard. He did stress the news was accurate, and it was becoming very obvious the war with Germany was nearing its end! He passed the word the Americans were in control of the Southwestern Pacific, both on the water, and in the air! He warned all, we must not antagonize our captors, just keep a stiff upper lip!

We anticipated heavy air raids on December 7 to remind the Japanese the U.S. had not forgotten the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the skies over Tokyo remained clear. Air raid sirens wailed at noon, sending everyone scurrying for cover, but the big, silver bombers did not materialize. The quiet was interrupted by heavy rumbling to the south of us, but Tokyo, Kawasaki and Yokohama were left untouched. Obviously, another Japanese city was a target for the American planes on this day!

Our existence seemed to stabilize during the next few days, that is, until December 12......On that day, the industrial areas that stretched along Tokyo Bay from Tokyo to Yokohama, which included Kawasaki, received a real pasting from high explosive bombs delivered by those wonderful, silvery behemoths, the big Yank bombers, as Freddie Harris referred to them. They visited our general area for about two hours, with an occasional pause between flights.

At this time, we learned a doctor and another officer from Omori were in the camp. The doctor was brought there to administer to one of our men who was very ill. During the time the doctor was with the sick man, he and the other officer talked to Captain Cant and some one else from our camp. They passed on some startling news! They told of another prison camp in Tokyo where the bomber crews shot down over the area were incarcerated! It seems that on occasion, this camp received food rations from Omori, and the men at Omori devised a way to slip something in the hot food that would encourage diarrhea to strike the inhabitants of the ‘special’ camp. Knowing the Japanese were terrified of dysentery, the men at Omori hoped our medics would be ordered to bring the malady under control without exposing any of our captors. It seems the plan worked like clockwork and indeed our doctor, or doctors were rushed to the other camp. During their “medical session” with the flying crews, the men learned the great, silver bombers were called B-29’s, and they were flying from Saipan, an island in the Marianas. We learned the Yanks and Tanks had, or were in the process of cleaning the Japs from the Philippines! We could hardly believe these incredible events! Our time had finally came! Few had ever heard of this Saipan, only some of the navy personnel.

Late one afternoon it began to snow! Only enough fell to cover the ground, but the cold penetrated everything! The three of us huddled before the fire under one of the pots we were using to heat water for tea. I had long since learned to drink the tea, sans cream and sugar, and enjoyed it immensely, pretending it was coffee! The two Limeys could never understand my constant longing for a cup of coffee, which I voiced often.

As more new information materialized, we began to realize a great net was closing in upon Japan, and we would witness the defeat from within. Many speculated our captors would kill us, and some even felt we would receive better treatment because the Japs would fear reprisal. The weather was cold, and although we continued to make our way to the market for food, these forays became fewer and farther between. About mid-morning of one day, a Jap Army truck backed into the compound and stopped near the doors to the galley. Takabyashi entered and told us we must unload rice from the truck and we must hurry. He told us we must unload our supplies before the American skokies (bombers) came. The truck was loaded with the familiar straw bags and we were told to take only six of the bags. The truck driver was very nervous and we decided to hurry before he drove off! After carrying the bags into the galley, we stacked them off to one side.

“I wonder what that was all about?” Jimmy said, “Maybe we don’t go to the market anymore!”

A few days of calm passed, then on a day that was cloudy and rather cold, the sirens sounded their eerie wail.

“Well”, Jimmy said, in his Scottish brogue, “the Yanks cannae see to bomb on this day! Too many clouds and things. Perhaps they’ll just sprinkle them about, here and there!”

Captain Cant, who happened to be in our midst at the time laughed, “Oh-yes Jimmy, they can see whether there are clouds or bad weather! They are equipped with what they call radar! Their instruments can look down and see everything!” We all looked at him in amazement!

“They can see through the clouds?” Freddie asked. The Captain nodded.

“They have some amazing equipment, and it works very efficiently!”

The planes could be heard now, just to the north of us. The bombs began to fall, and it was the heavy rumble of high explosives. The American crews were working on Tokyo.

“Aye, Tokyo is getting its due today!” Jimmie muttered, “it’s not the factories on this day!”

The raids went on, but the bombers did not return every day. At times there were smaller raids, sprinkled between the much larger ones. The bombers continually reminded the Japanese populace the war had come full circle, the war had returned to those who started it all, the Japanese. We, the prisoners-of-war, would rejoice! The Yanks in their mighty bombers would award us for our patience, our inner strength, and our will to survive! We would applaud them for their ability to bring the Japs to their knees, to wreak upon the Japanese, that which they had forced upon the people of China, the Philippines, and all of the vast area of the Southwest Pacific.

“Let the bastards reap what they have sowed!” James Mac K Sloan often declared.

Takabyashi entered the galley from the side door grinning and happy as usual. He walked to the table next to the rice pots and standing across the table from the three of us, he deposited a handful of beans , or peas, onto the table in front of us. I picked up one of the “peas”. At first I did not recognize it, then a light bulb popped on! It was a soy bean!

“Doko?” (Where?) I asked Tak as he stood smiling.

“Takusan!” (Everywhere) he said, waving his arms, “All men eat!” I nodded, and he waved for us to come. We followed him outside where he pointed at large straw bag. I told him I would cook some of the soy beans today.

“I don’t know how much these things swell up,” I told the others, “I better try a small batch and see what happens.”

“Aye, a small batch’ll do Mackey,” Jimmie said.

I separated about five pounds of the beans and washed them, then I decided to soak them for a couple of hours. Later I rinsed the beans off and dumped them into the pot. After pouring ample water over the beans, I built the fire and slid the wooden lid onto the pot.

Three hours later I ladled a couple of the beans out and found to my dismay that each bean was as hard as a rock! Two hours later the beans had refused to soften! I kept the fire going for seven hours! The beans were like bullets! I just couldn’t believe it. I had failed my goal of having beans for dinner. We were going to eat rice again.

“Damn,” I said, “what the hell is wrong?”

“The little bastards are uncookable” Freddie Harris exclaimed.

As we ate our rice that evening we sat talking. The subject turned to the bean episode. During this conversation, I pictured my mother preparing to cook lima beans, one of my favorite foods. I could visualize my Mom soaking the beans overnight. I could see her the following morning, pouring off the water and putting fresh water over the beans in the pressure cooker, and twisting the cooker lid on preparing to cook the beans. And then it came to me! PRESSURE COOKER! If she had to cook them in a pressure cooker, how in the world could soy beans be cooked in a rice pot?

“All I need is a pressure cooker!” I exclaimed, “I gotta have a pressure cooker.”

My two cohorts stared at me blankly.

“What the hell is a pressure cooker Mackey?” Jimmie asked.

“Why it’s a pot, with an air tight lid, a safety valve, and a gauge on it Jimmie.” I said.

“Mackey, we don’t have one of those!” Jimmie said softly.

“Uh-Jimmie, let’s think about that some.” I said. I got up and walked over to the rice pot and ran my finger around the rim. I found the rim of the pot smooth and even. I turned to the wooden lid and flipped it over.

“I got an idea blokes,” I grinned, “I think I can build us a pressure cooker!” I turned the lid over again, then placed it carefully onto the top of the pot. I then meticulously centered the lid. I asked Jimmie to bring me one of the heavy rocks lying just outside the door. We lifted the rock up to the lid with care.

“Now guys, I’m going to mark the lid underneath,” I said.

I carefully ran a knife around the top of the pot scribing the wood as close to the pot as possible, then I removed the lid. Using another smaller lid that came with the galley, but was useless for anything else, I laid it over the lid I had scribed and used it as a template to run the knife along to deepen the groove in the lid. It was tedious work and Jimmie and Freddie kept the kitchen work up while I laboriously gouged away, widening and deepening the groove. After two hours of dragging the dull knife along the guide, making short arcs in the tough, water soaked wood, I was satisfied with the rough groove. I sat the heavy lid onto the pot and turned it back and forth to seat it snugly. I had to rework two or three spots in the groove that were out of line but was soon ready to try my new pressure cooker. The beans were soaking, so I rinsed them off and dumped them into the pot, poured fresh water over them and started a fire under the pot. Would it work?

Freddie lifted the heavy rocks from the floor to the lid of the pot. I pushed them about to equalize the weight on the lid, and now could only wait.....After two hours of boiling I had the guys remove the rocks and I removed the lid to allow me to check the water level. I was fearful of the beans boiling dry. I added some water, put the lid back on and Freddie placed the rocks back on the lid.

Two hours later I opted to check the beans. We again removed the rocks and the lid and I ladled out several beans to test. I tentatively pushed on one of the beans with my finger and...voila! It was cooking! Two more hours in our pressure cooker softened the soy beans! We had beans for supper, and we cooked a whole batch for the boys the following day! Needless to say, the beans were well received by the men who welcomed this change from their eternal diet of grain, either rice or the red korean.

The morning following the bean dinner, the same men that praised we chefs for their tasty meal the evening before were threatening to attack us for being responsible for generating their great gas attack. The three of us reminded them of the properties of beans.

“Just remember maties,” barrister Sloan reminded them, “rice does not create gas, but beans do!”

“Yeah, yeah...gas!” one of her Majesty’s finest mumbled, “and we almost blew each out of our beds!”

“Well now!” James Mc K Sloan grinned, “they didn’t like the beans! We’ll give these blokes a rice ball for supper.”

“Now wait a minute Sloaney, we did nae say we did nae like the beans! It was the bloody gas tha’ got us!” another chipped in.

Later, we would receive more of the soy beans, and we would revert to our trusty pressure cooker and cook the beans. They were very bland without bacon or ham for seasoning, but the beans were something different!

The days passed onward through January, a bombing here, and a bombing there. The quantity of food available had pushed my weight upward to one hundred-forty pounds! I actually weighed more than I ever weighed! I informed my two friends I was considering the possibility of remaining in Japan after the war! After all, where else could I find such excellent food and fine treatment? A full belly, and an occasional slap in the chops, a boot in the behind. What more could an old POW ask?

“If I go back to the States,” I says, “I’m gonna have to go to work!” I mumbled.

“Aw now”, Freddie says, “We wouldn’t want to you to do that!”

I attributed our rather healthy appearance to our bread baking, and an occasional cake baked under the rice pots! This proliferation of bakery goodies was made possible by our friend Takabyashi! It seemed Tak had access to vast supplies of the Nishin Flour Mill’s number one product....flour! The smiling little man entered the galley (kitchen) one afternoon, opened the front of his long coat with a great flourish, and there hung a long, flat brown paper sack! The sack was suspended from around his neck with a small rope and hung almost to his knees!

Tak removed the sack and deposited it on a shelf on the rear table. We stared at him wondering what was in the bag? He grinned, and open one of the upper corners of the bag and removed a pinch of the white flour for us to see!

“Blimey! It’s real flour!” Freddie Harris gasped.

“Aye Freddie, flour it is!” James Sloan whispered. Tak grinned and proceeded to button his coat.

“We can bake some breed!” Jimmy Sloan said.

“That’s bread, Jimmie,” I said.

“Aye lad, that’s what I said, breed!”

“Quickly now, we must hide it before Matsie or the Sergeant pops in!” Freddie said. This was accomplished in a hurry and we began to plan baking our first bread. We would utilize the British Army mess kits for bread pans. They were deeper, and would allow larger loaves! From that time onward, our friend Takabyashi kept us supplied with flour! He also managed some sugar on occasion, and that opened up a whole new spectrum of bakery goods! I have little doubt the bread, and a frequent ‘cake’ produced a bit of extra weight for the kitchen crew!

On another occasion, Tak slipped into the galley late one afternoon with another paper sack half full of flour. Freddie Harris looked at him.

“Takabyashi,” he says, “do you ever take some of this flour home to your family?”

Tak shook his head, “Oh no, if I am caught they will hurt me!”

“But Tak, we will help you. You are our friend, our tomadachi,” Jimmie told him. Tak continued to shake his head.

Mati-mati,” Jimmie grinned, “We will fix for you.”

Freddie laid out a large sheet of the brown paper, then proceeded to dump a substantial amount of flour in the center. He then began folding each side of the paper back over the flour. Shortly, Freddie held up a neat, flat package and told Tak to slip it under his shirt, and inside his pants. He then told Tak to put his long coat on.

“Now Tak, walk back and forth so we can inspect you.” Most all of this was accomplished using pidgin Japanese and sign language. We finally convinced Tak that if he pulled his belt tight, the package would not fall out, and he would be safe passing by the guard at the gate. This small act was repeated many times, and Tak found it possible to furnish flour to his family.

It was quite early one morning when we were rewarded with a grand performance by the U.S. Navy! We wondered if all of the carriers of the Navy had parked off-shore and were belching forth these hundreds of dark, blue aircraft! Their appearance seemed almost magic. A long queue of fighters roared by, just above the telephone poles! They were flying single file, in a serpentine motion. They were looking for targets! These groupings could be seen everywhere!

But where were the Jap zeroes? Then one of the men pointed to the north, and we saw Jap fighters! But they appeared to avoid the swift American planes that seemed everywhere! There were no dogfights! Nothing that resembled planes firing at each other. The Yank fighters seemed to withdraw after a time, and were replaced by an equally large number of the same! It was indeed an incredible sight! I looked for familiar types of aircraft, but I did not recognize any of these planes. We learned later that most of the shipboard fighters were Grumman F6F Hellcats.

The darting planes wrought destruction on targets everywhere in sight. Nothing seemed to escape their chattering guns. They apparently carried small bombs also, because as they swept over some of their nearby targets, explosions ripped the air behind them as they shrieked by. And suddenly, they were gone! Except for the smoke and flames that littered the whole area, it was almost as though they had never been there! After the huge raid, we were thunderstruck! These fighters had to come from carriers! This meant the carriers were free to move about off the coast of Japan! Wow! While we speculated about the fighter sweep over Tokyo, another mass of the dark blue planes appeared over Tokyo Bay! The fast moving planes swept in over the bay from the east and the American Navy performed the second act of this incredible drama! Again, large flights flew in single file, blasting our ears with their wonderful sound! Oh, how we relished this marvelous display of air power, right over the main city of the Japanese Empire!

Most of us were now gathered in the large open area that extended from the barracks, past the benjo and the galley to the mess hall, the low building that paralleled the bay on the east side. Although the fast Navy fighters flew near our camp, there was no occasion when any of the planes threatened us in any way. It was as though the pilots knew just where we were, and avoided our little camp during these massive attacks on the nerve centers of the sprawling city of Tokyo!

We were witnessing a scene that few would ever see! The destruction of Tokyo from the ground! From Tokyo itself. Obviously, there would be reams of photographs from the air, shot by the Navy photographers, but from the ground level, just us folks that were “guests” of the Empire! We all welcomed our grandstand seats, right here where the action was! As suddenly as the planes appeared, they seemed to vanish! It seemed as though a signal sounded and the pilots ripped across Tokyo Bay and disappeared into the east. I found it difficult to restrain my glee, that threatened to explode from within! My glee, or anyone else’s glee might just invite a rifle butt to the head, or a poke in the eye! I managed to keep control of my exuberance as did the others. Of course one could hardly withhold a happy grin, or perhaps some other small sign, but a quick shuffle of the feet, or spontaneous clapping of the hands were sure to promote a pummeling of one’s body, etc.

The following day brought another massive attack by the carrier planes! This raid lasted for a long time! It seemed that the Navy aircraft darted about the city for hours. At tree top level, the streaking fighters strafed any likely target! We could see them in every direction! There seemed to be much activity to the south, over and around Yokohama. The extensive ship yards, and airfields there, would occupy many of the attackers for more that an hour! It was still a shock to us to see the skies over Japan’s major cities totally dominated by American fighters!

Late in February, a light blanket of snow arrived and covered the carnage! Much of the fire blackened ruins was hidden by the snow and everything seemed peaceful and quiet......for only a short while, and then, a large number of B-29’s visited the region. Shortly, the great bombers were joined by a massive fighter sweep from the carriers, dark blue fighters everywhere! Huge fires sprang from the snow-covered terrain! It seemed that many large districts were aflame, large clouds of smoke swept over our camp. We learned from Captain Cant that vast stretches of Tokyo, Kawasaki and Yokohama were paralyzed from the attacks, and for several days the whole area was at a standstill. We were unable to journey to the market to see any of the effects of the raids, but we considered ourselves fortunate the camp had remained untouched by the rain of bombs.

A week passed and the morning of a new day brought another snow, heavy flakes falling everywhere. Toward noon, with the snow falling quietly over Tokyo, the bombers returned! Now the bombs and the snowflakes fell together from the heavy cloud layer! The planes went about their mission efficiently, apparently utilizing instruments to locate their targets! We all hoped their targets were a safe distant from our camp, after all, they could make a small mistake! We prisoners, the Japanese, and probably the airmen were collectively happy when the day ended! Some of the intense fires were too close for comfort. From our location in the camp, our view was restricted in some directions. We could often see fires and smoke, but we could not see ground level, consequently, whatever was burning could not be determined. Many rumors flitted about through the compound concerning target areas, but the rumors were as porous as the smoke that abounded.

Early in March the weather began to change, winter was blending into spring. I was joyful to see winter departing. I was always cold, as were many of the other men. Our blood was thin from our lengthy sojourn in the tropical Philippines. I would learn more of this later, but at this time, I wanted to be warm!

I was fortunate in that I could often retreat to the rice pots and back up close to the fire box. The other men were not so fortunate! Complaints of the cold were often voiced by many of the men, usually those from the islands in the South Pacific. The British seemed to manage the cold weather much easier since they were acclimated to the seasonal changes. The Americans, in contrast, suffered when the cold descended. Our clothing seemed inadequate as an insulator from the chill compared to our clothing in the United States.

“It’s because these Jap clothes are not wool, Mackey,” Jimmie said, “you see, in Scotland, and England we use wool, just as you Yanks do.”

I huddled near the fire box, cupping a bowl of hot tea in my hands. Jimmie Harris stood next to me, hugging his barrel chest with both arms.

“Blimey!” he mumbled, “this bloody cold is beginning to get to me!” I laughed.

“Freddie,” I groaned, “I haven’t been this cold since I left home in good old Columbus Ohio!”

“Alf! Does it get this bloody cold where you come from now? I thought the States had a warm climate like my neck of the world in Sydney!”

“Freddie,” I says, “There are places in the States that get so damned cold you have to go to the store by dogsled!”

CHAPTER 25

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