Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [87]
It took two or three days to unload a ship. A huge net lowered us into the hold, where we breathed black dust and filled the net with raw coke. A kempii, or member of the military police, always stood watch and drove us like slaves. “Work faster! Work faster!” I’ve always been a fast worker, and the other prisoners didn’t like it. They’d say, “Zamperini, slow down. Slow down!” Gradually I did.
Next we’d take the barges upriver and unload the coal into wicker baskets, then carry those on our backs up a hill to waiting train cars. The baskets often weighed a hundred pounds, and we’d have to walk over a short wooden plank, barely big enough for one person, to dump them onto the half car. One day a guard coming off the car shoved me aside and I dropped about five feet to the ground with all that weight on my back, and tore the ligaments in my knee and ankle. After that I couldn’t work. Unfortunately, the rule in a Japanese prison camp is, if you work, you get a full dinner. If you don’t, you get half. That made even the most reluctant workers do the job.
Nutrition, of course, was a joke and starvation common. The Japanese had ninety-one camps on the home islands alone, not to mention in Malaysia, Singapore, and all over the Far East. Food for the civilian population was scarce, which meant it was almost nonexistent for prisoners. Prisoners died of hunger; the Japanese didn’t care.
Even farm animals ate better than we did. Every day, three times a day, we were served an awful red grain—Korean millet, I think—along with dried ferns and seaweed. The grain tasted bitter and foul. Often it contained pebbles and bits of wire that chipped my teeth and left my mouth bleeding and raw. The seaweed was pulled straight from the ocean and boiled, turning the water into a goop the consistency of snot. Our meals were perfectly suited to typical prison camp gallows humor. Guys would say, “Well, call me when the chow’s ready. I wonder what’s on Tojo’s menu tonight.”
This time I didn’t hesitate to steal food from the Japanese at every opportunity. Using an old trick learned from the Royal Scots at Omori, I sharpened one end of a short bamboo stick to form a natural funnel that, once stuck into any rough mesh bag of grain, siphoned out the contents.
Every night we had to change into pajamas provided by the camp. The pants had a waist string to hold them up, and strings to pull the cuffs closed to keep in the heat. A fly in front let you take a leak. They kept all the grain at Naoetsu in a small room near the heads; I could see the straw bags through knotholes in the walls. I’d say I had to pee, take my bamboo funnel, which was about two feet long, and standing outside the grain room, put one end in my fly. Then I’d lean against an open knothole and work the sharp end into a rice sack. Soon I could feel rice running down my leg. I’d let it fill calf-high, then shift to the other side.
We lived in a locked building, three stories high, with only one door, bracketed by two guards. I’d come back from the head, find Commander Fitzgerald on the second floor, stand on a blanket, and untie my ankle strings. Fitzgerald stashed the contraband in socks and fake wall panels. The Bird had allowed us a little stove with which to make tea; we used it to cook rice whenever the guards stood outside, and stashed it whenever they came in for regular walk-throughs.
Because my injury kept me from working, I was on half rations and stuck in camp. One afternoon I peeked through a mesh door into a room and saw a Singer sewing machine just like the one my mother had. As a kid I’d patched my pants, and I got an idea about how to get back on full rations. “I’ll make your clothes like Hollywood,” I told a senior guard. “Like Clark Gable.”
I spent half a day cleaning