1945

"Whatya want?" Johnson signaled to a clerk who would make a quick trip to the mess hall. They still didn't want Chambers running around in public in case he slipped and said something. Even though it was extraordinarily unlikely that anything said on Okinawa would fall into Jap hands, there was no sense taking any chances at all at this late stage of the game.

"How 'bout a hamburger and a milk shake? Chocolate."

Johnson rolled his eyes and guffawed. That would make three of each in the last hour. "Dennis, you are nothing but a damned eating machine."

CHAPTER 71

KYUSHU, NORTH OF ROUND TOP

Sgt. Yuji Yokota's plan to avoid further military service had fallen apart only a couple of weeks after Ens. Keizo Ikeda's frail plane had taken off and disappeared into the darkness.

Yokota's original idea had been to head north and lie low in the hills until the war ended, as he thought it surely must. He had what he felt was enough food to last him, but a sudden rain squall had ruined a great deal of it, forcing him down from the hills and into the camps to avoid starvation.

A roadblock set up to catch deserters had nailed him almost immediately. There had been no use even trying to lie his way through it. For one thing, he was still too well fed to have been anything but a soldier, and then he'd made the absurd mistake of standing at attention when a kempei lieutenant had interrogated him.

The kempei officer had sneered and given him two choices. He could "volunteer" for a shock brigade forming to attack the Americans, or he could be hanged right then and there. With false pride in his voice, Yokota had assured the officer that he would be honored to fight for Japan, which had been his intent all along. After all, he insisted, he had been on his way to find a new unit after his old one had been destroyed. The lieutenant's barely stifled laugh told him he hadn't believed a word of that declaration.

In the end, his sins had been overlooked because experienced NCOs were rarer than hen's teeth at this stage of the war. Yokota was delighted that they even let him keep his stripes. Even though he was primarily a mechanic, he was still a sergeant. With even that little bit of authority, he thought he might be able to bluff his way out of trouble. At the very least, he was still alive.

He was dismayed when he saw the unit he was finally assigned to. It was called a company, although it had only eighty men and to call the soldiers men, or the men soldiers, was to stretch either point. They were all extremely young and in their mid to late teens, inexperienced, ill equipped, and scarcely trained. They all had rifles and bayonets, although some of the weapons dated back to the turn of the century.

They averaged only twenty rounds apiece, which wasn't enough for a skirmish, much less a war. When Yokota commented on that, he was told that their purpose was one grand and final attack on the Americans, and that courageously thrust bayonets would prove more effective than bullets.

Was this all that was left, Sergeant Yokota wondered, an army of young boys? If this was the case, then Japan was in horrible shape indeed. Many of the young recruits looked terrified as well as cold and miserable. At least as military personnel they had access to Japan's dwindling store of rations, so they didn't look as bad off as many people he'd seen.

Their company commander was Lt. Fumimaro Uji, who was also the company's only officer. As the only experienced NCO, Sergeant Yokota was second-in-command. Tall, thin, and extremely nearsighted, Lieutenant Uji had been a supply officer until the army realized it had a desperate need for officers of any kind and, with no supplies to distribute, had found a way to utilize him.

Lieutenant Uji was unqualified to lead a field command and knew it. As a result and within hours of his arrival, it fell to Sergeant Yokota to get the company organized and on the move toward the Americans. Uji professed to hate the Americans and to be willing to die a glorious and bloody death fighting them. He made a speech to that effect that further terrified the youthful recruits.

Their trek south was fraught with peril. Even with the weather deteriorating, the American planes were omnipresent threats. They hiked the trails at night in an extended single-file column that made them difficult to be seen and hit. Even so, they often heard the crump-crump of bombs falling in their area, and several times came upon the grisly remains of others who had been either careless or unlucky. Knowing that the trails were in use, the Americans had started lobbing napalm bombs at suspected troop concentrations. On a couple of occasions they had passed the charred and blasted remains of Japanese dead. Whether they were soldiers headed to battle or civilians who happened to be in the wrong place was not always something that could be ascertained by looking on the mangled dead.