James Halperin - The First Immortal

Forever if he had to!

Without warning, he felt something wrap itself around his neck.

Now what? Ben thought, his instinctive shout of surprise choked off by the stranglehold. He lacked the strength to resist. Nothing remained left in him.

Then he realized it was a man’s arm, and heard the sweet sound of Ensign McGuigan’s gravelly voice. “Jumpin’ Jesus. Smitty! You okay, boy?”

This was the impossible made real, and in the face of it only a distant portion of Ben’s brain could muster emotion. He paid no homage to any feeling but amazement. Mack had braved those waters, risked his own life.

For me!

The officer towed him safely to his raft.

But Ben’s fortunes would change again when the rafts were spotted by a Japanese troop ship, HIJMS Asahi Maru. The Americans watched in helpless terror as the enemy ship bore down on their raft. Japanese sailors pointed weapons and motioned for them to board. Two American boys carried Ben, mercifully unconscious, into the bowels of the ship.

Ben Smith’s most primitive sense was his first to awaken:

Oh my God! The smell! He couldn’t breathe. Jesus, he’d survived for this?

Ben now sat on a hard steel surface, his body rolled into a virtual ball, neck twisted, head buried between his knees. His lungs still burned from ingested diesel, his mouth tasted it. A ship’s engine pounded his ears. And sweat-soaked human bodies mashed against him.

“Where am I?”

“In hell,” a tortured voice croaked. Its fear was unmistakable, infectious.

Ben felt his heart race. “What?”

“ Asahi Maru ,” said another.

Ben turned toward the words. They seemed calmer, but almost catatonic. “Japanese?”

“What else?” said the almost-familiar voice. “Empty Jap troopship. Taking us to a POW camp. If we live.”

“Jesus. How long’ve I been out?”

A third voice answered: “‘Bout a day. Figured you might’ve died. Some have. More room for us.”

A day? Ben thought. A whole day?

Then a man shrieked: inhuman, a lunatic being tortured. Too quickly, Ben tried to raise himself, banging his skull against asbestos-clad pipes hanging just three feet above the deck. He looked up and saw only a dense network of pipes, many superheated.

“Out! Out! Out!” the sailor screamed. “God, oh God, oh God! Get me out! Mother, come and get me now!”

The twenty-five-foot-by-thirty-foot-by-thirty-five-inch makeshift prison, enclosed at its sides by three layers of overlapping chicken wire, exploded in a din of shouting and scuffling. “Stop him!” “Got one running amok!” “Try and tackle him!” Two hundred men filled the shipsworks dungeon, one panicked sailor flailing and clambering among them.

“That’s a live-steam return pipe! It’ll cook you…”

Ben not only heard but felt a high-pitched squeal. Feet stumbled on deck and over men’s bodies. A heavy, hollow thunk echoed: head slamming into a valve cover. Then another noise, much like a crisp apple crushed between two powerful hands.

After a few seconds of silence he heard only the same soft cries, moans, and pleadings.

Time wore on, hours then days. All around Ben, hard-packed, were British and American sailors, mostly teenagers like him. But their numbers were diminishing.

To Ben’s right sat Petty Officer Hauptman, to his left Seaman Moses Walker. Each man’s shoulder touched his own.

Hauptman shivered.

In this heat?

And Moses’s arm had been broken; how badly, no one could tell. The ship’s cook slept or moaned, but little more.

“I know you saved my life,” whispered Hauptman. “Dossey told me.”

Ben patted the NCO’s back. “Just hold on. Think we’re coming into some swells.” The ship rolled, quaked, stabilized.

Moses moaned; brought his right hand to his left shoulder. “White folks’ hell. Lordy, Mama, I’m in white folks’ hell.”

Ben whispered, “Saltwater’ll drown any color, Moses. The sea doesn’t care.”

Moses made another sound

A laugh? Ben wondered Moses hadn’t done anything but moan. Dad had been right—the Navy was the best choice. The Navy would take all Americans, any color, any creed. Of course, it might get them all drowned, too. Ben replied with a laugh of his own.

Moses took Ben’s hand.

The ship shuddered again, another rogue wave, and Ben felt his stomach sink.

Hauptman clutched at him, grabbing his arm. “I’m gonna die. The heat, the stink, the dry heaves. Can’t breathe in here. Ain’t gonna make it, bud Not even worth tryin’ to.”

Ben felt the man’s hand quaking. “Just breathe. Please. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Think of nothing else. Keep breathing, Chief. One day, you’ll see the sun again.”

Hauptman gave no reply.

When Japanese sailors came with hoses to offer their captives callous respite, the men opened their mouths to swallow as much as possible. Afterward, Ben turned to Hauptman. The man’s eyes were open, but sightless.

He looked away from the lost man and caught Epstein’s eyes. The doctor tossed him a two-finger salute, then continued to wipe vomit away from the mouth of the sailor’s head cradled in his lap.

Ben waited hours, maybe a day, to report Hauptman’s death. They’d only throw him to the fish anyway—gone as though he’d never been. God, he’d saved the guy just to prolong his agony.

“Why?” Ben heard himself cry.

On his left, Moses whispered, “He been gone a long while, ain’t he, Ben?”

“A while, yes.”

“Why’d you wait?”

Ben shifted his legs; the needles stitched into numbness.

“‘Cause it hurts too much, Moses. Letting any of us go: It’s like losing a piece of me.”

Walker moaned. “My arm, the pain’s fit to kill me. My mama didn’t raise me to be no cook for white sailors. Now I’m gonna die in the yellow man’s sewer.”

Ben put his hand on the draftee’s forehead. Stupid! How could he possibly tell if Moses had a fever? It had to be at least 105 in there. “Just think of home. Your family. Your girl. You can make it.”

“If m’ time come, Ben, will you hold on to me, too?”

Ben took Moses’s good hand into his own and squeezed gently. Then he decided he would put this hellhole in a box, lock it up, file it away. Because if he didn’t, it would surely eat his brain; not just part, but all.

Ben felt the spray of the Japanese hoses, which meant another morning had come. He tipped his head back, pretending he was home, taking a shower. Moses Walker felt nothing at all.

Ben did not report his death.

I don’t accept it , he told himself. This passage was not inevitable. He would live. He would help others to live. He would fight this implacable enemy. And someday, by God, someday he would win.

The trip to the POW camp at Futtsu spanned six and a half days, during which none of the living ever left that space or those crumpled positions. There they remained, urinating and defecating in their clothes, receiving no food or medical attention and very little water. Only seventy-nine sailors from Ben’s ship, barely one-third of those captured, survived the voyage.

When the prisoners arrived at the eastern mouth of Tokyo-Wan , or Tokyo Bay, the Japanese at the camp were shocked to learn so many had died. Transported under similar conditions, their own soldiers had arrived at their destinations alive and functional. Japanese soldiers were smaller, but size had had little to do with it. Unlike these boys, they’d been mentally prepared for the ordeal, had known how long the journey would take and what would be waiting at the end of it.

It was the fear, Ben decided. Fear of the unknown had killed so many of them.