Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [93]
There was a weighty silence, then the officer stepped forward again. “Who is the better man, Tojo or Roosevelt?” Again Hamlin responded in favor of his commander in chief.
The machine gun barrels converged on Hamlin now. The Japanese officer repeated the question, “Who’s the better man? Tojo or Roosevelt?”
Though he might have had special reason to know, given FDR’s famous affection for his old ship, Hamlin simply said this time, “Roosevelt is my leader.” This seemed to satisfy the Japanese officer. He barked at his troops and they began breaking down their machine guns. When they were finished, they began herding the Americans into trucks for a journey to God knew where.
It wasn’t a long trip. The trucks drove them some sixty miles to Java’s capital city, Batavia. A Dutch installation there, known as “Bicycle Camp,” had been the headquarters of the colonial army’s Tenth Battalion, a unit of bicycle troops, before General Imamura’s troops seized it and turned it into a prison. The trucks passed through the gate and unloaded the prisoners along the long macadam road running straight through the camp. On either side of the entrance road, long barracks stretched a hundred yards or more, separate ones for the Dutch, Australian, British, and Americans. Constructed from concrete blocks, the barracks had smart red tile roofs and porches running the length of them on both sides. The sleeping quarters inside had no bunks as such. Prisoners slept on bamboo platforms that lined either wall. The barracks were subdivided into cubicles, each holding five or six men. Though the compound was ringed with concertina wire, it was full of relative luxuries such as running water and sewers. After the squalor of Serang, Lloyd Willey thought Bicycle Camp “looked like the Hilton.” About five thousand Allied prisoners of war would call it home in the summer of 1942.
For the Houston’s seasoned crew, it was boot camp all over again. Whenever a guard walked into the camp area, which they did day and night, the first man to see him shouted “Kiotsuke”—attention! “The whole camp froze,” said Jim Gee. “You stood like statues. Rank didn’t make a bit of difference. As long as you were a prisoner, you froze. And if the Japs saw you move, if you were a hundred yards away and you moved, you kicked something, or you picked up something, boy he’d walk directly to you and knock you right down with the butt of his rifle or do whatever he wanted to.”
Several times a day, whenever a Japanese officer saw fit, muster was called. Whenever tenkos were ordered, the prisoners counted off—“Ichi, ni, san, shi, go…” If a guard came within forty feet, a crisp, forty-five-degree bow was required, arms straight at the sides. The slightest failure—of posture, of appearance, of obedience to the babel of commands—brought a swift blow to the head by open hand, fist, stick, or rifle butt. The prisoners adopted the British term for this abuse, “bashings.”
It was no special form of torture. It was standard treatment in the Imperial Army, which routinely enforced discipline through physical abuse, humiliation, and corporal punishment. Though the Japanese had little regard for an enemy who surrendered—the Japanese army’s interpretation of the code of Bushido gave no such option to the emperor’s troops—the bashings were little different from what they gave their own troops. In the Imperial Army pecking order, the beatings flowed downhill from the sergeants to corporals to the several levels of privates, to the Korean conscripts, and finally to the prisoners. “When a guy got out of line, they didn’t bawl him out. He had to stand at attention, and they belted the piss out of him,” said John Wisecup. “Officers did it to one another, so they did it to us, only more so.”
Many of the Japanese noncoms initially at Bicycle Camp were first-team combat veterans with years of experience in Manchuria and China. Though their odd split-toed tabi sneakers and oversized uniforms struck the Americans as comical, their