Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

“What’s that mean?”

Sumi’s mind whirred. Assuming that the word was English, “Japas-Azea” sounded like, “Japs are there.” The man must have hollered in English that he had found Japanese soldiers. He must be British. Sumi wondered why their true identities had been disclosed so easily in spite of the disguise, but it was no time to indulge himself in that thought process. Fortunately, the enemy was small in number. He couldn’t allow them to return to their unit, since they had seen them.

“Envelop them and wipe them out! Tell Sarge not to miss even one of them. Go!”

The moment Morioka turned back, Sumi faced Lance Corporal Yoshitake, the best shot in the party, and pointed to the left woods. “Cut off their retreat, Yoshitake. Don’t let them out alive!”

“Yes, sir!” Yoshitake responded and went slithering along the slope beside the road with a Sten gun under his arm.

Sumi hurriedly called a first class private named Arima, who had been a bear and deer hunter in their homeland. Those British soldiers might be tougher than his usual game animals, but Sumi expected that Arima would be better than others in a forest battle.

“You go too, Arima! Cover Yoshitake’s flank. Got it?” Sumi ordered. While he shouted out, the echo of gunfire never left the dark forest. Having seen Yoshitake and Arima vanish into the woods, Sumi rushed to the ridge again. Hitting the dirt there and hiding himself behind the edge, he peeped over the other side. At first he could see Murakami lying on the road. Next he saw Morioka rapid-firing his rifle by manipulating the bolt dexterously. Other guys were missing; they might be crawling in the woods. Searching for the enemy, he released the safety of his Nambu fourteen. Then he felt some discomforting acid surge up from the bottom of his stomach.

Abruptly, things had become very serious, with hostile soldiers face-to-face, forcing a shoot-out. It was the worst event that had ever happened in his whole life. He had no combat or open warfare experience. Although he had ordered envelopment for the present, he couldn’t think of anything to do beyond that.

His ability to think was paralyzed by fright and confusion. Everything was an awful mess, just as he had feared. Disgusted, he clicked his tongue; the sourness welled up in his mouth again. Strangely this tasted like soda water. It reminded him of a flavor of soda pop he had drank with Yukiko.

During summers, he and Yukiko would drop in a sightseers’ teahouse neighboring their university in Kyoto. The couple sat on their favorite bench, side by side, and ordered soda pop. She laughed every time she saw Sumi choke when he dared to drain the bottle in one gulp. While they listened to the song of cicadas there in the shadow of green trees, he often felt as if time had stopped.

He remembered the cool refreshing sound of a glass marble rolling in the soda bottle and Yukiko’s laughter and her carefree, girlish, smiling face. For a fraction of a second, he wondered if he would ever see her again.

A short shriek went up, and Sumi saw a British soldier with an automatic rifle in his hands fall between the trees beside the forestry road. Shortly thereafter, noisy consecutive pops of Sten gun fire reverberated in the woods. The blast of a grenade followed.

When its resonance had faded, a dead silence replaced it. Before long, Pondgi stood up timidly in the undergrowth.

Hiding himself behind trees one after another, Sumi went forward and shouted out, “Did you wipe them out?”

Shimizu’s voice came, “Yeah, we got three! But one rat has run away over there!”

Just then, Arima replied from inside the woods, “I brought him down just now, Sarge! All enemies cleared!”

A slight breeze rose and carried the faint smell of powder smoke back to Sumi.

Again the stillness of the woods deepened after the battle. Members of the rescue party came out by ones and twos and gathered on the road. The soldiers had fanned out effectively and given the British a fusillade, as commanded by Shimizu. As for the enemy soldier escaping inside the woods, Yoshitake had successfully mowed him down with the Sten gun when Arima’s grenade gave him a finishing blow. Murakami was the only Japanese casualty.

Sumi looked for him at once. Shimizu had been kneeling down beside

Murakami. He shook his head when he saw Sumi approaching. Shot in the chest, Murakami had already passed away. Sumi stood blankly, pitifully dazzled by the whiteness of Murakami’s shirt, on which a round red spot had spread.

Murakami’s death made everyone feel depressed. Shimizu contracted his brows into a frown. His face showed a clear sign of distrust in Sumi’s leadership and that Sumi was responsible for the death of his comrade. He spat on the grass at the roadside and groaned. “Damn it! What a mess! Even though I was with him…”

Indifferent to Sumi, who had lost the power of speech, Shimizu went on.

“However deep we may hide ourselves inside a mountain on the sly, the enemies come when they need to, Lieutenant. You didn’t watch it since you’d gone ahead, but these bastards came at us from behind. They came suddenly, without any sounds, you know? It was a kind of ambush. The enemy might have already sniffed out our plan. Don’t you think so?”

Cross-examined, Sumi couldn’t be silent any more. “I don’t know, but it’s to your credit, having finished them all, Sarge.”

Sumi felt wretched and disgusted to have said something obsequious and soothing.

As Shimizu said, Sumi didn’t watch the entire battle, and he wondered if they had really finished them all. If even one man had slipped away, he would report their activity to his unit.

Sumi hastily ordered the soldiers in a loud voice. “Divide up and search for footprints now. Make sure we know how many there were.”

It seemed easy to investigate because the soil of the woods was damp, in spite of the dry season. Sumi’s men reported back that the enemy had been a four-man-party, all dead for sure, and they found no trace of runaways.

Sumi heaved a sigh of relief. But if the enemy detected his rescue party by intercepting a radio transmission or something and dispatched these four in pursuit, it would be the worst situation. He worried about what would become of them.

They lined up the remains of the four on the roadside. Each wore the distinctive British uniform, and ammunition pouches were attached on the breasts.

Their badges showed that one was a NCO and the others were privates. Sumi examined their belongings.

He found a photo in a pocket of the NCO. This freckled, big guy, a young woman with fair hair that seemed to be his wife, and two cute, little girls were all smiling at a ranch, somewhere in England probably. Both girls were about five years old or so, and one of them also had freckles. The family portrait looked merry and happy. They deserved his sympathy.

However, if they had caught the NCO alive, they couldn’t have taken him with them, for fear that at any moment he would escape and report their activity.

Even if they had been able to turn him in to Japanese military police, no one could have guaranteed that the MPs wouldn’t torture him and make him a live target for a bayonet practice. For his bereaved family, this might seem like the deed of devils. But he and his compatriots had burned many Japanese patients alive in the field hospital that couldn’t evacuate from the battlefield of Kohima and had just killed Murakami here. All compassion was useless. It was too late for pity after the war broke out. The chain of hate had already long since linked up.

Trying to keep his mind detached, Sumi continued the inspection but couldn’t find anything like a directive or an operation map. There was no evidence they had gained information about the rescue party.