The company arrived in Giruwa, the scene of the 144th Regiment's last hard-fought battle in eastern New Guinea. Shortly before we joined the main force and started fortifying the base, I had a ten-minute crash course in firing a light machine-gun. Together with four other recruits, I was assigned to a mountain gun platoon (without a mountain gun) as a light machine-gun squad in a garrison position on the right flank of the main force. Having come so far, I could not accept being posted to another unit in a light machine-gun squad, but I did not even have time to ask why, and headed for the designated position as if driven away.
Immediately after the hasty report of the posting, we started fortifying the camp. Perhaps because the location was close to the sea or there was a creek nearby, the conditions were such that we struck water after digging down one meter, and we could not put an overhead cover on the hole. For lack of an alternative, I made my foxhole like a train seat and sat there. I covered the top with an awning (to provide protection from evening dew and the cold), and camouflaged it with leafy branches, which I replaced every day.
The foxholes, dug at intervals of three meters, soon became tombs for dead soldiers killed by the enemy's shelling, sniping, starvation, and sickness. At that time, no one had the strength dig graves to bury the dead.
The platoon that our squad was assigned to seemed to have had little combat experience. I felt on many occasions that the captain and his men relied heavily on the members of our squad.
Though unaware of it at the time, there was a garrison base for the 41st Regiment (from Hiroshima Prefecture) nearby. I wish I were in high spirits in handling the light machine-gun, for which I had no experience, but on the contrary I was not confident at all.
The first enemy attack came about a week after we had constructed our position. With someone shouting "enemy!" around us, I heard loud gun fire from both sides start in confusion. Here and there our soldiers shouted "Oi, signals here!" As ill luck would have it, at that time I had been dozing off because of a fever. Awoken by the commotion, I looked at the jungle in front of me and saw some enemy soldiers moving across behind a thicket, and an officer-like figure moving to the left shooting wildly with a gun in one hand. I pulled the trigger of the machine-gun at the crucial moment, but for some reason or other it only made clicking sounds and did not fire. I struggled and struggled. Voices repeatedly came from the neighbouring position: "Fire the machine-gun! Hurry up and shoot!" There was nothing I could do, so I left the machine-gun and fired at the enemy wildly using five nearby 38 carbines in succession, while an ammunition carrier in the trench loaded bullets.
The exchange of gunfire ended about ten minutes later, and the enemy was gone. But the confidence which the mountain gun platoon had in us became less than nothing, and we had a hard time with their changing attitude toward us. Immediately we took the machine-gun to the Yazawa unit, who were machine-gun specialists, and asked them to repair it. It was revealed that the reason for the malfunction was that the muzzle was too close to the emplacement and sand had got into the gun. The machine-gun was dissembled, repaired, and test fired. We were then taught how to handle the gun, and checked the emplacement so that the same malfunction would not reoccur. We returned to our position with the repaired machine-gun and spindle oil they had provided for maintenance.
A few days later, there was another enemy attack. This time, we continually fired, more or less successfully, to make up for the previous mishap. We regained the trust of the platoon, and I held my head up high.
I recalled that a mate from the main force had said that "abandoned bodies always have some personal belongings", so at dusk, asking the men in the positions on both sides to cover me, I went searching for enemy bodies in the jungle in front of our base. Of course, I searched very cautiously, but I soon found one. I took the bag from his shoulder, and came back as if I were fleeing. In the bag were two packets of dry bread, a can of beef, and two cigarettes. Feeling triumphant, I ate the food with the squad members that night. Loosening the cigarettes, I mixed the shredded tobacco with dried leaves and rolled it back into several cigarettes using the paper from Infantry drill regulations. In this way, we enjoyed taking a puff, passing the cigarette among us for about a week.
After that, fortunately, there were no enemy raids before our withdrawal, or change of direction.[1] However, the enemy’s artillery bombardment became more severe with the passing days. There were a few bombardments every day, which started in the morning with the rising sun, with as many as several hundred rounds per minute. Right after we heard the rhythmical "booboboom, booboboom" sound of the shells rising, as if we were listening to Jazz music, there were a series of explosion with the sounds of "shudadan, shudadan". With the artillery smoke covering the area, and the sound of falling and shattering trees in the air, our base became a scene of hellish carnage.
One day in November, a shell hit the tree right beside me – a tree which had been broken in half by a bombardment the previous day. That moment I felt a shock to my head and all went blank. I came to a moment later, and touched my head to reveal that part of my scalp seemed to have been ripped off. I felt slippery blood and the exposed hard bone, but felt relieved because it seemed there was nothing wrong except for the pain. However, I lost two of my squad members in the foxholes on either side of mine. Only several dozen meters was the difference between life and death! I was unable to weep for sorrow.
The wound I got became festered and fly-blown during our withdrawal, and maggots often dropped onto my back. Now, the scar from the wound remains as, one could say, an honourable bald patch to match the old memory. Also, whether from the wound or from malaria, my fellow soldiers often said to me that "you sometimes lay unconscious for a few days", which became a topic of conversation among us after the war.
At about this time, with the distance between the enemy and us getting smaller, our every little movement attracted fire from enemy snipers, and we lost many lives. I called one soldier, but he did not respond. I went there only to find that he was dead, sitting with his rifle as if sleeping. There were some who became crazy after suffering high fever. After an enemy bombardment, we made it a custom to call out to each other in our foxholes: "Hey! Are you OK?" But the calling voices became less day by day. Sad days continued, during which I thought I might be tomorrow’s victim.
As for food, one mess tin of rice was allotted for our first five days, but this was reduced to half a mess tin for seven days after the next supplies arrived. In December, it became only a half a medium mess tin, that is a pinch of rice, for seven days. In January there was no food. However, on New Year's Day of 1943 there was special supply of a handful of rice, one sardine from a can, and small amount of soup. I mixed a lot of edible leaf buds with rice and ate it with the rest. It was our first delicious meal for a long time; I stretched this amount of food over three days.
In my case, I painstakingly picked shoots and fern-like soft weeds under the faint pre-dawn light, and, after boiling them, simmered them with rice. The only source of salt was powdered soy sauce in a small tin, which I had painstakingly saved for many months; I barely staved off hunger by licking the powder.
However, around this time our camp was covered with graves, and the stench of death filled the air. On top of this, the moaning of the wounded was heard here and there. I often thought that it would be much better to die with our company in a desperate charge against the attacking enemy and tanks, rather than to wait in agony, thinking only about food, waiting for what would come next, and looking like ghosts in the opur ruined camp.
Under these miserable conditions, we received the order from the main force for an all-out attack, and consequently stealthily gathered along the main road under cover of night. Thus, we finally joined the main force, but our company had only fifteen or sixteen men.
When I left the camp, petty officers and soldiers from the mountain gun platoon handed grenades to the wounded and bed-bound sick soldiers. The image of soldiers in tears handing out the grenades, the crying voices of the wounded who realised the meaning of this, and the image of the sick begging us to take them with us is etched on my mind. This was the beginning of the withdrawal, the reasons for which were kept secret.
In this way, our tragic escape began, in which half of the remaining force became more victims, as if another misfortune was added to our emaciated bodies.
Translated by Haruki Yoshida
Notes
1. Tenshin, literally “change of direction”, was a euphemism used by the Japanese army to conceal a withdrawal.
Kokoda (part 2):
Overview text Longer text Images Readings Jack Lloyd MIYASHITA Tetsunosuke
