Once the three young men had shared their story, they eagerly accepted food and water from the GIs.
“Easy now,” Deke said, gently prying his canteen away from one of the Chamorros who had been gulping down water. “You’ll make yourself sick, especially with all that halazone in there.” He couldn’t imagine trying to survive in the jungle without any food or water. These Chamorros must have been desperate to find help for the others back at the camp.
“How many others are in that camp?” Steele wanted to know. “I mean, are we talking about twenty or thirty people? I suppose that we could share some of our rations with them.”
Yoshio shook his head. “There are thousands.”
“What?”
It sounded like an impossible number, but the young refugees didn’t seem to have any good reason to lie. Dealing with a labor camp left behind by the Japanese had not been part of the squad’s mission, but it seemed as if they had little choice but to accompany the Chamorros back to the camp.
“Another question,” Steele said. “Where did the Japanese go?”
All three of the Chamorros pointed toward the north, where jungle-covered mountains rose. In other words, the enemy must be firmly dug in and waiting to make their final stand.
“What should I tell them?” Yoshio asked the lieutenant.
“Let them get something to eat and drink, and then tell them to lead us back to this camp.”
Chapter Nineteen
Hours later, the path brought them out of the thickest part of the jungle and into a cleared mountain valley. They had quickly covered the distance, less worried about running into any Japanese. According to the Chamorros, the enemy had pulled out and retreated to the north.
“I’ll be damned,” Deke muttered at the sight before him.
“Will you look at that!” Philly exclaimed.
Spread out in the valley below them was the largest display of humanity that they had seen on the island so far, larger even than the invading US forces or the Japanese defenders. During the occupation, the Japanese had rounded up at least twenty thousand Chamorros here, including entire families. They were forced to live in squalor, with muddy streets running between shacks built from whatever scraps could be found. A high fence, most of it torn down now that the Japanese had left, had surrounded the many acres of the labor camp.
There was barely a scrap of food to be found. The people wore rags, and many were sick or weakened by the poor conditions and hard work. It turned out that the ablest men had been taken away in trucks to work on the Japanese coastal defenses, leaving behind the weak and the mothers with children. Many of the prettiest young women had been taken away to serve as what the Japanese called “comfort women.” In other words, they had been drafted into sexual slavery, sometimes forced into satisfying the needs of dozens of Japanese soldiers each night. Such a living horror was difficult to comprehend.
As for the very young or very old people, many had simply died, as proved by the acres of graves beyond what had been the camp fence. Awaiting burial was a row of small bodies, clearly children, that lay bundled at the edge of the cemetery.
“Those goddamn Japs,” Lieutenant Steele muttered, his anger growing at the sight of the dead children and the emaciated survivors. “Those goddamn Japs!”
Despite their evident misery, the Chamorros greeted the arrival of the GIs with pure joy. Crowds swarmed the soldiers. The people just wanted to touch them. They even were eager to pet Whoa Nelly, who dutifully played her part by letting strangers scratch her ears.
Guam was now back in American hands, and the Chamorro people had always loved Americans. In a sense, the Americans may have been yet another colonial occupier, but they had been warm and generous toward the islanders, working with them rather than against them. What had the Japanese done? The Japanese had put the Chamorro people into forced labor camps and starved them. Lieutenant Steele called it a concentration camp.
“Just like the Nazis are doing to the Jews,” he said in disgust.
Deke had heard those rumors about what was happening in Europe, but he now had more immediate concerns.
“Take it, take it,” Deke said, giving away his chocolate bars to the hungry children. It was not nearly enough. To his astonishment, the children who had been lucky enough to get the chocolate did not wolf it down but calmly snapped off pieces to share with friends — and brothers and sisters. Not enough to fill those empty bellies, of course, but they were making sure that the other children could at least have a taste of the chocolate.
Deke felt a knot in his throat. Sharing the chocolate that way was something his sister, Sadie, would have done.
“Don’t give it all away,” Lieutenant Steele said. “I hate to say it, boys, but we’ve got to eat too. Besides, there’s a lot more where that came from. Rodeo, bring that radio over here.”
So far the radio had been used for brief reports. But now Steele used it to call in help. The discovery of thousands of people living in a forced labor camp was unexpected, but the chain of command reacted quickly. An airdrop was planned for food, water, and medicine. “If we’re lucky, they’ll get here before dark. Philly, Yoshio, Rodeo, Alphabet, when those planes come in, I want you to keep everyone back until the crates are on the ground. No point in anybody getting squashed. Deke, you get up in what’s left of that Jap guard tower over there and keep an eye out, just in case our friends here are wrong about the Japs being gone.”
“I hope to hell they ain’t. Won’t take much to outnumber us.”
“You see any Japs, you even up the odds for us as best you can.”
“You got it, Honcho.”
Soon they heard the drone of aircraft overhead. They set off some flares to guide them in — even the massive labor camp wasn’t easy to spot from the air, given the cover provided by the jungle canopy. Parachutes drifted down toward the camp. As Steele had predicted, the starving Chamorros wanted to rush the descending crates, but the GIs kept them back. Once the crates were on the ground, they used their bayonets to pry them open. The Chamorros themselves quickly organized distribution of supplies.
But as it turned out, not all the supplies came from the skies. Some of the camp leaders produced a bottle or two of American bourbon that they had somehow kept hidden away from the Japanese. They’d always believed that the Americans would return to help them drink it.
Along with the precious bourbon, it turned out that the Chamorros had hidden away American flags. Some were small and homemade, while larger flags had been secreted away after the Japanese invasion. To be caught with an American flag was certain death at the hands of the Japanese. Now those flags were waved in triumph.
As night came on, the liberated Chamorros insisted on sharing the bourbon with the GIs. Lieutenant Steele wasn’t about to veto the long-overdue celebration. He accepted bourbon in his tin mug and raised it in toast as one of the Chamorros shouted, “America!”
More than a hundred other voices joined in, “America! America!”
That night, feeling a pleasant glow from the bourbon, Deke spread his blanket beside the warm coals of what had been a bonfire. The open sky overhead was a whole lot better than a bat-filled cave in the jungle. The bare ground was comfortable enough once he had scooped out a hole for his hips. Maybe it was foolhardy, but the squad didn’t even post a guard, not when they were surrounded by at least twenty thousand friendly Chamorros. Nearby, Philly and Yoshio were already snoring.