Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [120]
The Dai Moji Maru stopped to rescue survivors from the Nichimei Maru, lingering until after dark to get the work done. There were 960 in all, the majority of them Dutch. Ensign Smith, who had seen the whole show while spotting the aircraft topside, wrote, “I will give credit to the Japanese merchant captain of the Moji Maru, who conducted himself in a thoroughly seamanlike manner and after the planes left he refused to leave the vicinity until all survivors from the other ship were picked up.” It wouldn’t occur to Charley Pryor till much later that what may have compelled the Japanese captain to save them was not mercy but necessity: The prisoners jamming his miserable holds were needed alive for a reason.
One Houston sailor who had traveled this path with the Fitzsimmons Group, Donald Brain, heard en route to the docks that they were headed for Burma. Uncommon among the Houston’s working-class enlisted men, Brain knew the remote country well from his father’s prewar work in foreign oil fields. His dad’s job had taken him all over the world: Kirkuk, northern Pakistan, Shanghai, Rangoon. From the age of twelve to seventeen Brain had lived in the last of these cities, Burma’s great southern port. He learned the local commoners’ language, knew the gentleness of the Buddhist mind, the communal style of child rearing, the quiet spirit of industriousness. And he knew the fractious country well enough to weigh its possibilities and risks as a home in captivity. He thought of the mines in the north, the oil fields in the Irrawaddy River Valley, and the rubber plantations in the south. If Burma was indeed the destination, all of these would be likely places to put prisoners to work.
In Singapore, there had been talk of a railway in jungles far to the north. They had seen the groups of British and Australian prisoners shipping out, to where nobody knew. Brain doubted the experience would live up to the guards’ sunny billing. But what was this talk about a railroad? Don Brain wondered. The hearsay was never very specific. He knew enough about Burma to ask this: If that was indeed their destination, where in its godforsaken jungles was there a railroad to work on?
CHAPTER 35
The men on the Dai Moji Maru—dozens of them, mostly Dutch, were horribly wounded in the attack by the U.S. bombers—spotted land again on January 16. The coastline was broken by a wide sweeping delta where a powerful river dissipated into the sea. Mangrove forests and rice paddies surrounded them as the ship navigated the winding river channels and estuaries. Forty miles into the delta system, they came upon a city. Speculation flew about its identity. It was well familiar to at least one sailor. “Hell, I know where we are now,” said Donald Brain. “This is Rangoon, Burma.” He caught some flak for being a know-it-all, but he was right.
The Japanese Fifteenth Army invaded that country on January 16, 1942, rolling over two weak divisions of Burmese and Indian irregulars in less than two weeks and putting the imperial sword against Rangoon, the threshold to Great Britain’s south Asian empire. When Japanese troops landed on March 7, taking the port city as the Dutch were surrendering on Java, the rout acquired epic proportions. Nearly a million Burmese became refugees, fleeing for their lives as the Japanese advanced northward. The British Army commander who yielded the city, Lt. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, had already built a reputation as a steward of hopeless causes. Less than two years earlier, he had directed the British evacuation of Dunkirk. U.S. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell’s forces escaped into India in a withdrawal that would make “Vinegar Joe” too a hero for his exploits in retreat. By the end