Unbroken_ A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption - Laura Hillenbrand [96]
The extremely low caloric intake and befouled food, coupled with the exertion of the forced exercise, put the men’s lives in great danger. “We were dying,” wrote captive Jean Balch, “on about 500 calories a day.” Scurvy was common. Foodborne parasites and pathogens made diarrhea almost ubiquitous. Most feared was beriberi, a potentially deadly disease caused by a lack of thiamine. There were two forms of beriberi, and they could occur concurrently. “Wet” beriberi affected the heart and the circulatory system, causing marked edema—swelling—of the extremities; if untreated, it was often fatal. “Dry” beriberi affected the nervous system, causing numbness, confusion, unsteady gait, and paralysis. When wet beriberi victims pressed on their swollen limbs, deep indentations would remain long after the pressure was removed, giving the men the unnerving impression that their bones were softening. In some cases, wet beriberi caused extreme swelling of the scrotum. Some men’s testicles swelled to the size of bread loaves.
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In Ofuna’s theater of cruelty, survival was an open question, and deaths were common. For Louie, Phil, and the other captives, the only hope lay in the Allies rescuing them, but this prospect also carried tremendous danger.
In the fall of 1942, when the Americans attacked Japanese ships off Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, the Japanese beheaded twenty-two POWs held on the island. A similar horror played out on Japanese-held Ballale, in the Shortland Islands, where British POWs were being used as slaves to build an airfield. According to a Japanese officer, in the spring of 1943, when it appeared that the Americans were soon to land on Ballale, Japanese authorities issued a directive that in the event of an invasion, the POWs were to be killed. No landing occurred, but in response to an Allied bombing, the Japanese executed all of the POWs anyway, some seventy to one hundred men.
A few weeks after Louie arrived at Ofuna, an American carrier force began bombing and shelling Wake Atoll, where the Americans captured during the Japanese invasion were still being held as slaves. Mistakenly believing that an invasion was imminent, the Japanese commander had the prisoners blindfolded, bound, shot, and dumped in a hole. One man escaped. When he was caught three weeks later, the commander himself beheaded him. The only trace of the men was found years afterward. In the atoll lagoon, on a hunk of coral, one of the POWs had scraped a message:
98
US
P.W.
5-10-43
These murders were the first applications of what would come to be known as the “kill-all” rule. Japanese policy held that camp commanders could not, under any circumstances, allow Allied forces to recapture POWs. If Allied advances made this a possibility, POWs were to be executed. “If there is any fear that the POWs would be retaken due to the tide of battle turning against us,” read a May 1944 order issued to every POW branch camp commander, “decisive measures must be taken without returning a single POW.”
That August, the Japanese War Ministry would issue a clarification of this order, sending it to all POW camp commanders:
At such time as the situation becomes urgent and it be extremely important, the POWs will be concentrated and confined in their present location and under heavy guard the preparation for the final disposition will be made … Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation, or what, dispose of them as the situation dictates … In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.
As the Allies fought their way toward Japan, the captives in Ofuna and POWs everywhere else faced the very real threat that Allied successes would bring the kill-all policy