Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [112]
As the prisoners would soon well understand, the Koreans’ position in the Imperial Army pecking order was but a half notch above the captives themselves. Nicknames made it possible to discuss them in a common shorthand. The guard nicknamed “Snake Eyes” had a beady look. “Pock Face” was fighting eczema. “Hollywood” was busy with his hair all the time. His fastidious dress did not keep him from being one of the nastiest guards in Bicycle Camp. The “Brown Bomber” bore a certain resemblance to Joe Louis. The Korean named “Liver Lips” because of his heavy facial features was “the worst one that we ever ran into,” said Charley Pryor. “He just went through there from one end to the other bashing and hammering and clubbing with his silly rifle…. I think he was just about the meanest and orneriest rascal that we’d ever run into. You didn’t have to provoke him. He’d just see you, and he was provoked.”
For a variety of reasons there was never serious talk of escape from Bicycle Camp. They could have managed it, could have scurried over the concertina wire, made it back into the jungle. But then what? As the crow flew it was five hundred miles to Australia. Java was Japanese-held, as were its skies and surrounding seas. The jungles were alive with unfriendly natives. The well-traveled men of the Navy company had a better handle on these realities than artillerymen of the Lost Battalion. “A soldier might tell you, ‘Yeah, we’ll get a boat and go,’” said George Detre, “but…not the sailors, no, we never seriously entertained escaping.”
CHAPTER 32
In early October, seven months into the prisoners’ tenure as guests of the Imperial Empire, an uneasy order had settled over Bicycle Camp. That was about to change. Rumors began surfacing that a move was afoot. The Japanese guards, in their guttural pidgin, spoke of vacations in a green, mountainous land full of sunshine.
On October 8, the first of several groups of prisoners was marched out of Bicycle Camp, taken down to the Tanjung Priok waterfront, and mustered in the shadow of an old freighter, a coal-burning five-thousand-tonner named the Kenkon Maru. Sprayed with disinfectant, the men were herded up the gangway and led to their stowage, hundreds upon hundreds packed in each hold.
Pack Rat McCone’s reputation was well established by then. Having honed his talent at dockside requisition, he was, according to historian Gavan Daws, “the only man who could make five-gallon cans invisible to the Japanese.” Up the gangway he strode, hauling a beggar’s ransom in surplus: two tires, a gang of pipe, containers useful for capturing water, and several sacks of other valuables slung over his back. “Man, he had some gear,” said John Wisecup. “The ‘Gunner’ was really loaded.” The Japanese guards laughed out loud at the sight of it. “They seldom laughed,” said Wisecup, “but they did this time.” “He became a sort of hero, or whatever you want to name him, but he was the one who controlled an awful lot of water aboard that trip,” Howard Charles said.
This first group, known as the “Black Force” after its senior officer, Australian Lt. Col. C. M. Black, consisted of 191 Americans and 600 Australian soldiers and sailors. Its senior U.S. officer was Capt. Arch L. Fitzsimmons, the commander of the Lost Battalion’s Headquarters Battery, leading most of the Americans to call Black Force the Fitzsimmons Group. It included three of the 131st’s superb second lieutenants, James Lattimore, David Hiner, and Roy Stensland, as well as nineteen members of the Houston’s Marine detachment, including Howard Charles, Jim Gee, Pinky King, Pack Rat McCone, Freddie Quick, Robbie Robinson, and John Wisecup. Houston sailors in this group included Gus Forsman, Otto Schwarz, and forty-one others.
The remaining Americans, including all of the Navy company officers and medical staff, and a few Marines who had been overlooked in the hasty first selection, including sergeants Harley Dupler and Charley Pryor, stayed behind as the Kenkon Maru departed