Savage Sniper

Then again, perhaps that was exactly what the Japanese had in mind.

It was a dreary, hot, cruel place to be.

“I promise you one thing,” Lucky whispered in his ear almost daily. “I’m getting out of this place, one way or another.”

“Just don’t do anything crazy,” he warned.

Faraday had become something of a leader among the prisoners. The Japanese did not distinguish between officers and enlisted, so they all lived and suffered together.

For the most part, the guards went about their duties, treating the prisoners with all the indifference that they would have shown sheep or goats. He had learned which Japanese to watch out for, especially the nasty sergeant they had nicknamed Mr. Suey, which was as close as they could come to pronouncing his real name.

Another Japanese of note was Lieutenant Osako, who spoke English and thus did most of the day-to-day communicating with the prisoners. Osako ran hot and cold, showing glimmers of humanity one day when the other Japanese weren’t around, then looking the other way the next day when Mr. Suey decided to beat a prisoner for spilling a bucket of rocks. The lieutenant was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde all rolled into one, so that you never really knew who you were going to be dealing with. More than most of their captors, it was clear that Lieutenant Osako was at war with himself.

The Japanese commandant cast the longest shadow of all. From time to time, he came out to watch the prisoners working. Faraday couldn’t have known how close to the truth he’d been when he had told Lucky that the commandant must have really messed up to get assigned command of this remote prison camp.

The commandant sometimes had them assemble in the prison yard and then gave long political speeches in Japanese, which Lieutenant Osako translated whenever his commanding officer paused to catch his breath. It was such an odd contrast to see the enemy soldiers and officers standing at attention in their neat uniforms, facing the ragged prisoners. Faraday could have sworn that the commandant was drunk during these speeches.

The other odd thing about the commandant was that he was never without his bow and arrow, making him something of a strange sight or even an eccentric character.

But as Faraday soon discovered, the bow and arrow were for more than show.

* * *

Faraday was not far off the mark in thinking that the prison camp commandant, Colonel Kaito Yamagata, must have done something wrong to wind up in charge of this remote, mosquito-infested camp. In Yamagata’s case, it had really been a series of mistakes and career blunders, some purely bad luck or bad timing, the chief one being a disastrous skirmish that he had led against the Chinese early in the war, resulting in an embarrassing defeat of his unit.

However, even that might have been overlooked. But the Japanese military was quite political, and Yamagata had never learned to play the game. He was now what was known as a “permanent colonel,” without any hope of advancement to general. The truth was that the Japanese army could not care less if a POW camp was badly run, but they didn’t want to lose any battles due to poor leadership.

Yamagata had determined that he would run his camp efficiently, and he had. Unfortunately for the POWs, his definition of efficiency meant feeding the prisoners as little as possible and working them to the bone.

* * *

Colonel Yamagata had decided that it was time to teach the prisoners a lesson. He had tired of their lazy ways and constant disrespect. To that end, he summoned to his office the two subordinates most responsible for operating the camp.

Lieutenant Ryota Osako was his second-in-command, although he found the young officer too idealistic for his own good. He had made it clear that he did not always agree with Yamagata’s methods, although he knew better than to protest. He carried out his orders, but without much enthusiasm.

The commandant relied more heavily on Sergeant Hiromu Matsueda. The sergeant was a man of simple tastes who appreciated a full belly, a drink of sake, and a cigarette. Yamagata saw to it that the sergeant never wanted for any of these things. As a result, the man never questioned Yamagata, from whom all good things flowed.

Matsueda had been a farmer before the war, and the prisoners seemed to occupy the same place in his mind that had once been reserved for his pigs and goats. They were just shuffling, troublesome animals. When they didn’t do what you wanted, it was best to beat them with a stick. Sergeant Matsueda had a brutal mean streak that served Yamagata well in keeping order.

The commandant’s office was a neat but sparse space, the wooden floorboards recently swept, overseen by a portrait of the Emperor that was the only decoration on the walls. The office felt crowded, however, due to an ornate desk that would have looked more at home in a plantation office.