Pacific Sniper

As they entered the clearing that had served as the main staging area for the outpost, Lieutenant Thibault stood near the base of a tree that a Japanese sniper had climbed into. His single-shot weapon was no match for the incoming flood of GIs, and he seemed to have run out of ammo, anyhow. They could see him up there, only partially obscured by the palm fronds. The soldiers were having a good time taking pot shots at him.

Just like a treed coon, Deke thought.

“Lieutenant, do you want me to tell him to surrender and climb down here?” Yoshio asked.

“Oh, he’s coming down, all right. We’re just going to skip the surrender part. Sergeant, bring that Thompson up here,” Thibault said.

Sergeant Hawley approached and handed the submachine gun to the lieutenant, who aimed it up into the tree and proceeded to empty the magazine. The Japanese soldier fell to the ground with a heavy thud and didn’t move.

“Good shooting, sir.”

“That’s what I call a Jap coconut,” Thibault said. He called over a combat photographer and had him snap a photo of himself standing over the dead soldier while striking a pose with the submachine gun. A group of soldiers gathered to see the show.

Watching, Deke felt a little sick. It wasn’t that he was opposed to killing the enemy, but he didn’t care for the way the lieutenant was making a spectacle of it. He turned away.

Unfortunately, the lieutenant spotted him and noticed the look of disapproval on Deke’s face.

“What’s the matter, Deke?” Thibault wanted to know. “We’re here to kill Japs, in case you didn’t notice.”

“You sure killed the hell out of that one,” Deke said.

“What’s that?”

“You sure killed the hell out of that one, sir.”

Deke moved off before he said or did something that he’d regret later.

A short distance away, Philly had been watching the whole thing. “You sure like to push it, don’t you?”

“He’s taking pictures of Japs he shot like it’s a hunting trip or maybe he’s gonna show his grandkids someday,” Deke said. “Don’t that seem wrong to you?”

“He’s an officer. He gets to do what he wants.”

As it turned out, the wholesale killing of Japanese was just beginning.

Soldiers began to ransack the shelters that hadn’t caught fire. There wasn’t much left, but the GIs let out a whoop when they found several cases of canned crabmeat and even a couple of bottles of Japanese rice wine.

What the officers were mostly interested in were stacks of fuel barrels that had somehow escaped the incendiary strafing fire. While Americans used big fifty-gallon drums for fuel, the Japanese barrels were smaller. Nonetheless, there was enough gasoline to keep the tanks going for a while longer, and it was that much less fuel that would need to be carted over the jungle trail from the beachhead. The Japanese had apparently intended the fuel for use by their own tanks, most of which had been destroyed by the handful of Shermans or in aerial attacks.

With the outpost secured, the next object was Mount Santa Rosa itself. The squad that now included Patrol Easy headed out once again. The Japanese had spent the months leading up to the attack on the island that they had known was coming by preparing their fallback position. The closer they got to the Japanese bastion, the more that the rugged landscape became dotted with tunnels and bunkers.

Up ahead, Conlon spotted three Japanese soldiers making a run for it. He raised his rifle but didn’t manage to get off a shot before the enemy soldiers slipped into a hole in the ground and disappeared from sight.

Excited, Lieutenant Thibault broke into a run. He reached the spot where the Japanese had disappeared and used the muzzle of his carbine to flip open a hatch made from woven sticks and grass. It was so cleverly made that they could have walked right past it and never noticed. The hatch revealed the entrance to a large tunnel.

As the men gathered around, they could hear the echo of many, many voices singing down below.

“It sounds like there are hundreds of them down there,” Thibault said in surprise. He looked at the interpreter. “What the hell are they singing, anyhow?”

“Sounds like patriotic songs.”

“Spread out and see if there are any other entrances,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t want these Nips sneaking out and attacking us from behind.”

Within minutes, now that they had an idea of what to look for, the squad had found two more entrances, all leading down into large tunnels.

“I’ll bet the whole underside of this hill is filled with Japs.”

It was an unsettling thought. They’d heard so many voices that it indicated the Japanese far outnumbered the Americans aboveground. But with the tunnel entrances covered, the Americans had the Japanese trapped.

“Sir, do you want me to shout down there and see if they will surrender?” To Deke’s ears, it sounded as if Yoshio already knew what the lieutenant’s answer would be, but he had to ask.

“No, I’ve got a better idea.”