Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [79]
What I did believe I’d seen with my own eyes.
One afternoon the air-raid sirens wailed. “I don’t think this is any more than a practice run,” said a soldier with whom I was discussing the state of the war. “We don’t have a base near enough to launch an attack.” Still, we both backed away from the windows, just in case.
Suddenly we heard a big gun fire. We dashed back to the windows and looked outside, where in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention and the rules of war there was an antiaircraft battery that the Japs had just uncovered on a small sandy spit not more than a hundred yards from our compound. (No one could take it out without hurting the prisoners.) In camp the guards roamed, rifles ready, shouting “Bi-ni ju-ku!” I knew I had to get away from the window or be shot, but I could not resist finding out what had caused the commotion. By sliding on my back along the floor I could see the sky straight up through the narrow windows. There, floating through a high-altitude haze, leaving vapor trails from each end of its huge wingspan, was the largest aircraft I had ever seen, flying at thirty thousand feet like some sort of white angel. I knew it was a messenger from home, a harbinger of imminent revenge. It took my breath away.
The word spread, and when the day’s work parties returned we found out from a pilot who’d recently arrived at Omori that it was “the latest thing out,” a B-29. (Bi-ni ju-ku, in Japanese.) Then I remembered seeing those words scrawled as graffiti on a slaughterhouse wall when my group went to pick up some horse guts for dinner.
The plane flew over casually, around the Tokyo industrial complex, in a big lazy circle, taking pictures. No Zeroes chased it, but a few days later the Japanese papers reported that Zeroes took off to attack the bomber. The exact headline read: THEY FLED IN CONSTERNATION.
ON A BRIGHT, crisp November morning the Bird burst into barracks Number Two and without resorting to the usual subterfuge called my name. I thought surely I’d been chosen for some awful detail or, worse, another beating.
Instead, he paced in front of me, hand on his chin and said, “You run, eh?”
“Hai (yes), Watanabe-san,” I said, wondering what he had in mind.
“Olympics, eh?”
“Hai.”
“Your mama and papa worried maybe you dead?”
“Hai.”
Tom Wade had set up a post-office operation at Omori that was responsible for many letters from home reaching their destinations, but when I tried to write—I was desperate to contact my family, to let them know I was still alive—the Bird forbade it. I never understood why.
“Maybe you make a—ah, nan deska?” He cupped his hands in front of his mouth, as if he were talking into a microphone.
“A broadcast?” I asked. I was instantly on guard. I knew about the bunka, the special “culture camp” in Tokyo that housed those who made pro-Japanese (or anti-Allied) propaganda broadcasts from Radio Tokyo. No one in his right mind wanted to participate. Not only was it morally wrong, but soldiers too weak to resist would pay for their treason, however rationalized, with a court-martial after the war. On the other hand, I wanted my family to know I was alive.
“Yes, broadcast,” the Bird said. “You broadcast. Okay? Na?”
I shook my head from side to side. “I have to think about it,” I told him. I wanted to say that international law would not permit me to do more than give a basic greeting for identification purposes, but I had no doubt he’d punish me for my boldness. However, the Bird accepted my reluctance with amazing good humor, and I sensed then that he must have been acting on strict instructions not to hurt me, rather than his own twisted desires.
I WENT IMMEDIATELY to the senior camp officers and asked their opinion on the question of broadcasting. To my surprise I discovered that they had given other prisoners the same opportunity to send