Yasuyuki Kasai - Dragon of the Mangroves

Sumi almost fainted. He couldn’t listen to the rest. Even as a low-ranking officer from a reserve officer candidate school, he knew that the situation on the Ramree front was deteriorating. He had to sneak into a tremendously dangerous place and rescue a badly mauled garrison. Sumi realized he had just been assigned an incredibly perilous duty.

In July 1944, the Japanese had miserably failed in Operation Imphal, the reckless offensive into India. The Army had lost nearly 55,000 men in the battle and to starvation during the retreat. Confronted with the Allies striking at full throttle after the victory, the Japanese Burma Area Army had already been repeating the debacle.

The Arakan area, where the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army had been positioned to guard a southwestern Burma full of strategic points, was no exception.

Starting with a recapture of the very northwestern air field Akyab on January 3, 1945, British-Indian forces were fiercely attacking this area. On January 12, an enemy commando brigade landed in the Myebon Peninsula, fifty kilometers east of Akyab, where the main force of the Fifty-Fourth Reconnaissance Regiment had been guarding the coastline. The regiment was in the thick of a fierce battle.

Sumi’s company was on its way to provide reinforcement. Up until then, the company hadn’t engaged in a battle yet, thanks to Yoda, who had been finding every excuse to save his and his men’s lives.

The 121st Infantry Regiment stayed here in Taungup—two hundred kilometers down the coastline from Myebon Peninsula—and guarded this area, including Ramree and the Cheduba Islands. Northwest of Taungup, Ramree Island is in the Bay of Bengal, divided by innumerable creeks through mangrove from the mainland. It is the biggest island in Burma. Cheduba Island, which flourished as a trading relay station of the East India Company in the old days, is located further southwest.

An enemy brunt finally reached Ramree Island on January 21. Reinforced

with a fleet including an aircraft carrier and battleships, the Twenty-Sixth Indian Division landed on Kyaukphyu, the northern port, that morning. The garrison challenging this was the Second Battalion of the 121st Infantry Regiment, supported only by six thirty-seven-millimeter antitank guns and three twenty-five PDR field guns taken from the British. Unable to resist the strength of one division, it had been cornered to the east coast until then.

Then on January 26, an enemy force of three thousand with the support of an aircraft carrier raided Cheduba Island and built beachheads within the day. The sentry party, under the command of Second Lieutenant Motoyama, barely escaped. They made it back to Taungup on February 1 by leaping small islets, one after another.

Having seen the loss of two strategic islands on the Bay of Bengal firsthand, the HQ of the 121st Infantry Regiment ordered Ramree Garrison to retreat to the continent on February 9.

But it was too late. British gunboats and planes had already blocked many creeks and had destroyed all of the garrison’s emergency boats when the order was announced. Also, rescue operations intended by the regiment HQ hadn’t ever worked well. Enemies found and sunk four landing barges previously dispatched by the regiment commander. Then a liaison noncommissioned officer of the Second Battalion, located in the HQ at the time, rushed to the scene with more than a hundred domestic fishing boats. But the flotilla lost its direction in the maze of interwoven creeks and was forced to scatter. Little more than a few boats could have limped into the island. Having no trump card, the regiment HQ finally repeated the order for garrison soldiers to evacuate by swimming across Myinkhon Creek, where the strait was narrowest.

And this time, the obstinate division HQ was throwing a new rescue party into the fire again.

After the briefing, Sumi visited the 121st Infantry Regiment HQ shack and got military scrips for the operation from its finance unit. Then he left silently.

No matter how few options remained, it was extremely dangerous to swim across the sea where enemies were vigilant. That’s why the division HQ had decided to dispatch a new rescue party by boat. Apparently, they wanted to prevent more losses in this desperate situation. Sumi could understand that.

But why must he be the sacrificed pawn? This type of rescue operation had failed twice before he got the order. And yet, they assigned him to try it once more. He couldn’t understand it, however hard he might try.

The reason Sumi became an Army officer was that it was smarter and physically easier than the alternatives. Every rank and file of the Imperial Army was crammed into a barracks like livestock and abused like slaves. On top of that, each man had to stay there between dusk and dawn. It was nearly a prison life.

And bullying seniors and drill sergeants broke each man’s humanity and pride.

Every drafted man knew it well.

Sumi had already had experiences like that. Old regulars blamed him for spilling no more than two hundred cc of diesel oil on the ground, shortly after he had enrolled as a second class private. They had lit his pubic hair and had made him perform a naked dance, after they had given him repetitive slaps fierce enough to make him almost unconscious. He had turned red with fury and humiliation, but once he understood the culture, it had been clear that such treatment was a daily occurrence for soldiers. Military law banned bullying, but this was overlooked.

The Army seemed to reinforce it. They wanted soldiers who were nothing more than cogs in the killing machine.

On the other hand, officers could live outside the barbed wire fence. Each was free to come and go. And a batman came for him with his horse every morning. If Sumi could draw a better salary by riding a horse and saluting gallantly while adorned with a samurai sword and polished leather boots, that was the way to go.

Needless to say, he jumped at the reserve officer candidates’ course opening—a way for well-educated conscripts to become Army officers.

The real world was tougher than Sumi thought it would be. It hadn’t been long before he had recognized that officers from a candidate school were no match for elites from the military academy. Captain rank was the limit. An ability to command wasn’t demanded of them; rather, a reckless courage to get killed first as a good example for soldiers. And now Sumi had proof: being lightheartedly assigned the responsibility of such a dangerous operation in which there was a good chance he was going to die. It was too late to repent of his hasty decision to become an officer.

But Sumi also knew everything depended on how he looked at the matter.

What would wait for him in the Myebon Peninsula? His platoon had four model ninety-seven tankettes. They would be expected to provide firepower and be put forth to bear the brunt. But the maximum thickness of the tank’s armor was only sixteen millimeters, though this small vehicle looked like a fair tank. He didn’t know how to cope with formidable M4 Sherman tanks with only the easily flam-mable tankettes. It was easy for him to imagine being burned alive there.

On the other side, the order to collect boats and go for the island lacked any specific measures. The order allowed Sumi to take it easy and shift at will. It would be a perilous infiltration; there was no doubt about that. But at least there would be some hope of return. He felt that it was better than going to Myebon.

Once he got an order, he had no alternative but to obey it. Sumi reluctantly began planning the rescue.

The Japanese had command of neither the air nor the sea. The chance of a bloodless withdrawal was so slim that both the garrison and the regiment HQ had to rely on a reckless wading operation. How could Sumi make his operation safer and more efficient? He didn’t have to. Returning alive and reporting without a reprimand would be acceptable. This called for careful thinking. At first he considered why the previous rescue operations had failed.