Immediately, the soldiers bent to their work with fresh energy. They didn’t fear Noguchi, with his shovel and his dusty clothes. But they all knew Sergeant Akio Ikeda. He carried a rifle with a telescopic sight. He commanded the sogekihei squad — men with special ability as sharpshooters. Rumor had it that he sometimes drank too much sake and sat up here on the hill, picking off Filipino laborers in the distance.
“Thank you, Sergeant Ikeda,” Noguchi said.
“You should hit one with your shovel from time to time,” replied Ikeda. “Show them you’re the boss.”
Noguchi shrugged. “Maybe you are right. But you must admit, the men have worked very hard overall.”
Even Ikeda had to agree. He gave the officer a rare smile. “Hai. The Americans will break upon this hill like the sea dashing upon the rocks.”
“Indeed,” Noguchi said.
Together, the two men continued their inspection of the defenses. It had been an intense matter of debate and even disagreement, but General Yamashita, overall commander of Japanese forces on Leyte, one of the nine main islands that made up the Philippines, had declared that the American invasion should not be met with defenses at the shoreline.
To many military minds, this seemed like an unnatural way to defend an island. Shouldn’t the defenses be at the shoreline? Wouldn’t the Japanese want to meet the enemy at the beach and hurl them back into the sea, preventing them from gaining any foothold on Leyte? Many officers could be forgiven if they didn’t understand why this strategy was being abandoned in favor of allowing the American forces to land with relatively little opposition.
General Yamashita had ordered that the beaches be left undefended for the most part. He had sound reasons for this strategy. Any defenses at the beach itself would be out in the open, vulnerable to the naval bombardment that would surely precede the American landing. No matter how many men and guns they put on that beach, there might be nothing left but churned ground by the time the enemy guns fell silent.
Instead, General Yamashita had moved the bulk of defenses inland. The Americans would land, but they would soon be drawn into a deadly trap. Hidden in the hills and jungles, the big guns could do little against the well-entrenched defenders.
But this did not mean the landing would be met with a welcome mat. There would be more than a few machine-gun positions close to the beach. It would be fairly easy to move the machine gunners into position after the American bombardment ended. With overlapping fields of fire, the machine guns would exact a bloody toll before they were silenced.
Guinhangdan Hill would be another thorn in the Americans’ side, anchoring the Japanese coastal defense strategy. The hill itself was what remained of an ancient volcano. Much of the volcanic stone had been hollowed out for defensive fortifications. The stone was almost made to order for this purpose — hard enough to withstand enemy shelling, but porous enough that it could be dug away by men using picks and shovels.
From up here, the artillery could fire down on the beach and also at the invasion fleet itself. No matter how much firepower the Americans threw at the hill, no matter how many planes flew overhead to drop their bombs, Major Noguchi had helped ensure that the only way the hill could truly be taken would be for those troops to march inland and storm it — at great expense.
Still, even someone as steadfast in his duties as Noguchi could not ignore the fact that the island might be overrun in the end. Other islands had fallen under the American advance. Would Leyte be different? Whatever the outcome, he was sure that the Americans would be very sorry that they had come ashore. Noguchi would make them sorry, as would Ikeda and his snipers. He smiled with satisfaction at the thought.
Ikeda had noticed the officer’s smile. “I know what you are thinking, sir.”
“Do you?”
“You are thinking that you are very glad that we are not the ones who will have to attack this hill.”
Major Noguchi barked a laugh. “You would be correct in that assumption, Sergeant Ikeda.”
The two men continued to climb the hill, Ikeda moving easily up the slope, while Noguchi huffed and puffed. He paused from time to time to catch his breath and to inspect what was ultimately his handiwork. Groups of men labored to dig sniper holes or to add a few more sandbags to the entrance to an artillery position, passing the sandbags up the hillside in a daisy chain that reminded Noguchi of a line of ants.
It was quite a variety of ants, considering that the growing manpower shortage meant that men of all ages had been conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. Some of the soldiers were barely more than teenagers, while a few had hair shot through with gray. The older soldiers might easily have been the grandfathers of the youngest conscripts, considering that men from ages fifteen to sixty were now being drafted. Under the old rules, national service had been limited to ages seventeen through forty.
In truth, the army was something of a catchall for men who wouldn’t hold much promise as pilots or sailors — but a man of just about any age could hold a rifle or throw a grenade. This did not mean that the soldiers lacked fervor — almost each and every one of them was ready to sacrifice his life for Japan and the Emperor — so much the better if he took a few enemy soldiers along with him.
Most of the men worked in their undershirts or had even stripped to the waist in the heat. Their pants and boots were covered in dust, making some of the men almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. Each night, they went to sleep grimy and sweaty in fetid quarters, then rose at dawn to do it all over again.
Noguchi did not trouble himself too much regarding the welfare of the men. They were simply a means to an end, which was the construction of this fortress against the impending American attack.
Yet even he had to admit that the work was taking its toll. Sadly, many of the soldiers looked too thin, their rib cages showing or their chests hollowed out. They had spent endless hours laboring on this hillside, and the truth was that they lacked decent rations. Most of them were surviving on a bowl of white rice a day, with a small serving of some meat or fish or canned crab perhaps every other day. It was barely enough food to sustain a child, let alone a Japanese soldier doing hard labor all day. These underfed soldiers would soon be expected to put down their shovels and pick up their rifles. Would they even have enough strength left to fight?
Noguchi felt a little guilty about his own sturdy frame, if not exactly corpulent, then definitely well fed. Then again, officers had access to much better food, and the major had never been one to deny himself. As for Ikeda, the major wondered if the man needed to eat at all — he seemed to have endless reserves of energy to fuel his wiry strength. The man reminded Noguchi of a coiled steel spring.
Noguchi paused for breath, taking the time to observe a group of men working nearby. One of them seemed to only be poking at the soil with his shovel rather than actually digging. In fairness to the soldier, he appeared to be nearly as thin as the shovel handle. “You, there, put your back into it,” Noguchi said.
The man bent to his work, but the tip of his shovel still only scraped ineffectually across the rocky soil, resulting in the unpleasant sound of metal screeching over rock.
Quick as a flash, Ikeda stepped forward and swatted the man in the side of the head. “You heard the major. Dig! You are a lazy disgrace!” For good measure, Ikeda kicked the man so hard in the seat of the pants that it raised a cloud of dust from the soldier’s dirty trousers.
“Hai! Hai!” the soldier shouted, redoubling his efforts. The soldiers around him also worked harder to avoid Sergeant Ikeda’s boot. Dirt flew. In the Japanese military, physical punishment of soldiers was common. When Japanese officers heard that their American counterparts had to respect the individual rights of servicemen, they were astonished. How could the Americans hope to fight a war? And yet, somehow, they did. A war that they were winning.