This was the “kid” whom Deke fought beside.
Now Yoshio served as their ears on this hillside, trying to piece together the snatches of conversation overheard from the Japanese. If any prisoners were taken, it would be Yoshio’s task to interview them to gain any nuggets of intelligence. He’d had a chance to talk with some of the Japanese captured on Guam, but so far there had been precious few prisoners taken on Leyte.
Most Japanese troops would rather die by their own hand than surrender. It was a brutal fact of war that some American troops didn’t trust the Japanese who tried to give themselves up. They were simply shot. In fact, it was often only the badly wounded who fell into American hands. The GIs weren’t afraid of them, and they were too weak to take their own lives.
Following Deke’s advice to keep his head down, Yoshio leaned back against the trench, took a deep breath, and shouted something in Japanese.
There had been snatches of conversation drifting toward them previously from the enemy trenches, but now a stunned silence followed.
Curious, Philly asked, “What did you say to them?”
“I finally did what you suggested, Philly. I asked them to surrender.”
“Well, it’s about time somebody listened to me,” Philly said. He nodded in the direction of the enemy trenches. “They’re pretty quiet all of a sudden. Maybe they’re thinking it over.”
The silence did not last long. A shouted reply came from the Japanese side, followed by a fresh flurry of gunshots.
“What did he say?”
“He said that I am a traitor to the Emperor.”
“I can think of worse insults than that.”
“You don’t understand,” Yoshio explained. “For a Japanese, there is no worse insult.”
“You don’t look none too bothered by it,” Philly said.
“That is because I am not Japanese. I am an American. What do I care about the Emperor?”
From over on the enemy’s side, there came more shouts and gunshots.
Deke grinned. “Nice going, kid. I reckon you managed to rile them boys up.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The stalemate between the Japanese and the GIs continued as the shadows on the hill deepened. On the American side, they knew it couldn’t last for long. The hill needed to be taken. They would have to keep pushing. There were constant radio messages demanding progress updates.
“They’ve got a timetable they want us to keep back at HQ, huh? Well, the Japs have got a different timetable. We’ll take this hill when we’ve taken it, that’s when, and not a minute sooner,” an officer grumbled under his breath.
But it was not how he replied over the radio.
“Yes, sir!” The brass didn’t want to hear any griping or excuses. Up on Hill 522, the officer’s official reply was simply, “Situation progressing.”
He clicked off before he heard any response. There was an unwritten rule that an officer who hoped to keep advancing in his career knew to say as little as possible while expressing a can-do attitude. That and not getting killed by Japanese snipers was a good strategy for moving up the ranks.
With night coming on, the idea of progress on the battlefield seemed optimistic. All the while the enemy gun battery kept up its fire, wreaking who knew how much havoc on the American forces on the beach below.
Each concussion of the enemy guns served as a reminder of unfinished business. The Japs still held the hilltop. The big ships of the American fleet kept silent for fear of dropping a shell on the heads of their own troops on the hill.
From time to time, an American plane swooped in low and hammered the hilltop, trying to knock out the battery. The sight brought cheers from the GIs assaulting the hill, but their joy was short lived. Despite the efforts of the bravest pilots, the cave was too deep and well defended by antiaircraft guns. After tangling with the Japanese defenders on Hill 522, one or two planes limped away, trailing black smoke.
“We’ve got to take this hill,” said Philly, hunkered down in the trench.
“Sure we do, but there are a whole lot of Japs who don’t want to give it up,” Deke pointed out.
“The Japs didn’t stop us the last time we were here,” Philly said. “They won’t stop us now.”
Deke didn’t say anything. He knew that Philly was right, but he couldn’t help remembering the sight of those headless corpses of the Filipino guerrillas who had died here that last time. The Nips were ruthless, all right. They would be a tough nut to crack.
As if to serve as a reminder that time was wasting, the shadows cast by the overripe sun elongated into dappled fingers that stretched across the killing field. The shadows created a perfect camouflage for the Japanese infiltrators who began to creep toward American lines.
These enemy troops were armed with hand grenades rather than rifles, their only goal being to move close enough to toss the grenades into the trenches occupied by the Americans. Now and then a Japanese soldier popped into view as he got to his knees to hurl a grenade. Heck, the Japanese could just about roll the grenades down at the Americans.
Sometimes the Americans got lucky and shot the enemy soldier before he could release the grenade. The enemy grenades also had one major shortcoming. While American grenades were activated by pressing on the charging handle and pulling out the pin, the Japanese version was activated by a sharp knock — usually against a rock or even more often against a soldier’s own helmet. The telltale sound gave the Americans warning of each grenade attack.
To see a Japanese soldier hit himself in the head before hurling his grenade was almost a comical sight, except for the fact that the grenades often made it into the trenches and exploded with devastating effect. The Japanese fragmentation grenades were somewhat weaker than what the GIs used, but you didn’t want to be anywhere near one when it went off.
Meanwhile, the Japanese sniper somewhere across from them kept up his harassing fire. He had claimed more than a few American lives — he seemed to shoot the instant some poor GI made the mistake of sticking his head up from the trench or out from behind a rock. The GIs couldn’t stay down all the time because they had to keep a lookout for infiltrators and defend against them.
Deke knew the Japanese sniper was hidden in the adjacent trenches, but he hadn’t been able to get a bead on him. The sniper must have been dug in and well hidden. Considering that the Japanese had been up here building their defenses on this hill for weeks or even months, he would have had plenty of time to create the perfect sniper’s nest.
An unsettling aspect of this fight was that the Japanese were close enough to be heard in the American lines, and the inability of the American troops to press forward had made the enemy bold enough to taunt them.
From time to time they heard the taunts in broken English:
“Hey, Charlie! How you doing, Charlie? Listen good now. We going to kill you.”
“You Japs stink like rotten fish,” one of the GIs shouted. “I can smell you from here.”
“American, you smell like rotten meat. Perhaps we are already smelling the rotting corpses of your friends that we have killed. You will rot next to them soon.”
Off to Deke’s right, Philly couldn’t resist responding. “I’d like to see you try!”
The gibe was followed by a bullet that cut the air not far from Deke’s head.
Philly swore. “That was close.”