Hunt for the Bamboo Rat Read online

  The stone crashed down with a thump, rolling onto the ledge, off the face of rock, ending with a thump in the dirt.

  Zenji scrambled over to it.

  It would have to be a large thing to have survived that rock. He crept up to the trap.

  The platform was broken in half, lying on the bag of dirt. There was nothing under it.

  Zenji pursed his lips.

  He got down on his knees, frantically searching the ground with his hands. He found the rock.

  And the body.

  He jerked his hand away at the weirdness of the warm, furry, dead thing. It had a long tail.

  He could not identify it in the dark.

  He wrapped it in fat leaves and set it under a small pile of rocks so some other creature wouldn’t steal his food.

  He went to sleep smiling.

  In the morning, he would feast.

  * * *

  A rat.

  Enormous. Sharp-toothed.

  Zenji hated rats.

  But it was meat.

  He cut through the fur with his piece of knife and peeled the skin off the body. He wanted to cook it, but he couldn’t start a fire with sticks.

  He gave up trying and ate the thing raw.

  It wasn’t all that bad.

  He was starving. He only had to forget what he was eating. He thought of it as pig. Pig, pig, pig ran through his mind as he chewed. Ummm, good pig. This is the best raw pig I’ve ever eaten.

  He ate the whole thing, then lay on his stomach by the river and rinsed out his mouth.

  He’d eaten dog.

  Blood.

  Bugs, grass, crayfish, and leaves.

  Now rat.

  I’m a savage, Ma.

  He smiled, his full stomach brightening his mood.

  The next day he found lice.

  He ripped his pants off. They were all over his legs and chest, and his hair itched.

  “Get off me!”

  He sat in the stream and tried to wash them away. He laid down in the water and washed his hair. Those bloodsuckers were relentless. At least with the river he could scrub some of them away.

  For a long time he lay on his back in the shallows at the edge of the stream with only his face above the surface. Drown, parasites, drown.

  Finally, he got up and dried off in a patch of sun.

  Keep going.

  The sound of the stream comforted him as he followed it wherever it went. This is what his life had become: whatever, wherever, however.

  What did it matter anymore?

  You will come back to us, Zenji Watanabe.

  Where had he heard that?

  Keep going, keep going.

  For days he followed the stream. He hadn’t eaten well since the rat. Lice still feasted on him as he tried to sleep. And for the first time, his mind had started to play serious games with him. Sometimes he saw and truly believed things that were not there.

  Abir, in the shadows.

  Two boys, like wolves, staring.

  A smoky ghost with no feet.

  Nami, with three-inch fangs.

  I should just stop.

  Sit.

  Die.

  Just go to sleep and never wake up. It would be welcome. What a curious thought—just sit and die. Am I the one who thinks that thought? Or am I the one who thinks about thinking that thought?

  He froze.

  Voices!

  People talking!

  Oh, I know what this is. Zenji smiled. Death, creeping up to talk with him. The voices of dead people.

  Death kept talking.

  Death came closer.

  Zenji’s heart began to pound.

  He scrambled to hide.

  “Man, when I get home I’m going straight to the desert. I don’t want to hear another mosquito sing to me for the rest of my life!”

  English!

  Zenji peeked through the bushes, breathless.

  Six men.

  None Japanese.

  Americans? They looked it … but their uniforms were different. The insignias. He’d never seen anything like them. Who were these guys?

  He could feel his hopes begin to soar. English. He hadn’t heard a word of it in months. He started to stand but held back.

  Be sure, be sure.

  When he saw U.S. printed on their canteens he gasped. “It’s them,” he whispered. “It’s them, it’s them, it’s them.”

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. Thank you, he whispered to the God he believed had given him the will to keep on going.

  Slowly, he stood.

  No quick moves.

  They would think he was a lost Japanese soldier, and he didn’t want to be shot.

  He raised his hands and stepped out into the open. “Don’t shoot! Please … I’m an American … American.”

  The six men dropped to their knees and trained their weapons on him, stunned.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed.”

  Zenji got down and humbled himself. He was filthy, shirtless, with a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his waist, and ripped and torn pants that were black with dirt and grime. His body was peppered with the shiny scars of cigarette burns.

  “Don’t move,” one man said, approaching cautiously.

  Zenji peeked up. The name printed on his uniform was Porter.

  “You’re no American.”

  Zenji kept his hands in view. “I’m G2, Military Intelligence. I was captured at Corregidor with General Wainwright and taken prisoner. They tortured me, then sent me to Manila to serve as houseboy to a Japanese colonel. I escaped in Baguio when Yamashita took his forces higher into the hills.”

  It was more than he’d said in months.

  Porter glanced back at the other men. “Stand up,” he said to Zenji. “You don’t have to grovel.”

  Zenji struggled to his feet. Tell them what you know!

  “Yamashita might still be around, I don’t know. I got caught in artillery cross fire and was wounded.”

  Zenji peeled away the filth.

  Porter winced. “What are all those marks on you?”

  “Cigarette burns. Torture.”

  Porter eased up on the rifle. “You need medical attention, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  The five other men surrounded Zenji, studying him. One of them said, “You sure he’s American? He don’t look it.”

  “I’m American,” Zenji pleaded. “From Honolulu. Military intelligence. G2. I need to find my unit. Colonel Olsten. I have information about where to find Yamashita.”

  Porter cocked his head. “Find him? You don’t know?”

  Zenji hesitated. “Know what?”

  “We got Yamashita. The war’s over. Ended in August.”

  “August? What month is it now?”

  “Boy, you really have been lost. It’s September 1945. We’re out here looking for stragglers.”

  September? “The war’s over? Who … we won?”

  Porter grinned. “Those poor buggers sure didn’t.”

  Zenji staggered.

  Porter took his arm. “Come on, buddy. We got to get you some help.”

  He handed Zenji a canteen, and Zenji drank deeply.

  “Keep it,” Porter said.

  It was like gold. A perfect canteen. There wasn’t a scratch on it. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Porter snorted. “You smell like a garbage dump, man.”

  Zenji tried to laugh he was so happy. He ended up coughing.

  “Here,” another man said. “Ain’t food, but it’s all I have.”

  Juicy Fruit gum.

  Zenji looked at it as if he’d never seen a stick of gum in his life. He peeled away the wrapper and stuck the gum in his mouth.

  Nothing.

  In his entire life.

  Had ever.

  Tasted.

  So.

  Good.

  Zenji grinned, and the man nodded.

  “You get back to the regiment camp and get yourself a sweet Cal
ifornia orange. Now, that’s good!”

  “Camp?”

  Porter turned and lifted his chin. “A few miles thataway. Follow that trail. You’ll see it.” He looked up. “Getting late. Might have to stop and settle for the night before you get there. This place gets darker than dark.”

  “You’re not going with me?”

  Porter shook his head. “Gotta look for stragglers. Don’t worry. Camp is close and easy to find. Just stay on the trail.”

  Zenji thanked them again, profusely.

  “Approach with your hands up,” Porter said. “You might scare somebody.” He chuckled and waved to the other men. “Let’s go!”

  “Wait,” Zenji said. “You can get lost in this place. How do you know where you’re going?”

  Porter pulled out a compass.

  “Of course,” Zenji said.

  They gave him another canteen, some matches, and a clean undershirt and vanished into the jungle.

  Zenji limped toward the camp.

  September 1945.

  That meant he was, what?

  He stopped and thought about it. Really?

  He was twenty-one years old now.

  Unbelievable.

  He’d gone only about two miles when night fell and he had to stop and spend one more night on the ground, right there on the trail. He wasn’t moving from it. He would not get lost again.

  He curled into a ball and used his crumpled, stinky, blood-caked shirt as a pillow. No way he was getting that pure white undershirt messed up.

  “Ma,” he whispered, tears of joy filling his eyes, “I’m coming home.”

  The next morning he found the camp.

  With one hand on his throbbing wound and the other raised in surrender, he called out.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m American!”

  The startled sentry fumbled with his rifle when he saw Zenji coming toward him. He raised it to his cheek. “Down!” he shouted. “Get down! Now!”

  Zenji obeyed, and the sentry ran toward him.

  He forced Zenji onto his stomach, put a knee on his back, pinning him down and grinding his face into the dirt. “One move and I’ll blow your brains out!”

  “Please,” Zenji pleaded. “I’m an American!”

  “Shut up!”

  The sentry turned and whistled for backup. Another guard came and the two of them dragged Zenji to his feet.

  The second sentry turned his head to the side. “This Jap smells like a sewer!”

  “I’m an American,” Zenji said again. “I served with General Wainwright. I’ve been lost and—”

  The first sentry jammed the butt of his rifle into Zenji’s kidneys. “I said shut up!”

  Zenji yelped and grabbed his back.

  The two sentries frisked him. One of them found the knife blade and scoffed. “No wonder they ran.”

  The other sentry grunted. “You a deserter?”

  “Hey,” the first sentry said, nudging Zenji. “Why do you speak English?”

  Zenji kept his mouth shut. He needed to talk to people with bigger brains.

  The sentries herded him toward the regiment camp. “I want to see your commanding officer,” Zenji said.

  “How about a nice soft bed with feather pillows, too?”

  Zenji didn’t respond.

  Men stared at him as the sentries marched him through camp to an army tent, where he was forced to sit cross-legged on the dirt floor. One sentry remained with him while the other went to find an officer.

  Master Sergeant Gage ducked into the tent twenty minutes later. He looked Zenji over. “Stand.”

  Zenji struggled up.

  “You say you’re American?”

  “Zenji Watanabe, from Honolulu. G2. United States Military Intelligence Corps, badge number B-12, code name Bamboo Rat.”

  Gage eyed him.

  “Contact Colonel Olsten,” Zenji added. “He’ll confirm that.”

  “We doing undercover work in the jungle now?”

  “I was on Corregidor when it fell and I was captured.” He pointed to the cigarette scars. “They threw me in a POW camp and tortured me, trying to get me to admit I was a spy. I told them nothing. They kept me there for a year, I guess, and finally gave up on me. They would have executed me, but because I speak Japanese and English, they forced me to work for them in Manila. Colonel Fujimoto. When they retreated to Baguio I escaped. Got lost in the jungle, for months. Some of your men found me yesterday … Porter … Porter sent me here.”

  Gage stared at Zenji.

  “Get this man cleaned up,” he said after a long moment. “Take him to first aid and have them look at that wound, then give him something to eat, a shower, and something to wear. Stay with him while I check this out. If he tries to run, shoot him.”

  As gruesome as Zenji’s shrapnel wound looked, the medic told him he’d done a good job with what he’d had to work with. “Amazing. You’re a tough son of a gun. Gonna leave a nasty scar, though.”

  “I got a collection of scars.”

  “I see.”

  They gave him a set of khakis, a hot field shower, fed him, and let him rest on a cot. It was the most luxurious two hours of his life.

  A private came to escort Zenji to the commanding officer, a major. His name was Connelly, and he was extremely apologetic.

  “We spoke with a field office near Manila and got your story, pretty much as you told it to Master Sergeant Gage. You were listed as missing. They were amazed that you were still alive! They’re sending a jeep to pick you up in the morning.”

  Connelly sat back and crossed his arms. “You say you actually saw Yamashita?”

  “Yes, sir, briefly.”

  “And what was this man like?”

  Zenji thought a moment. “Honorable, sir, unlike some of the other Japanese officers. He was protective of his men.”

  The major nodded. “In war you see the best and the worst in people.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  The next morning a jeep carrying two lieutenants arrived. They greeted Zenji like a long-lost hero, and for the first time in months Zenji allowed himself to feel safe.

  To feel happy.

  He could only nod.

  That night, Zenji did not eat dog, bugs, or rat.

  But that would have been preferable to the shock that awaited.

  Manila was a city of rubble.

  The place Zenji had come to love had been brought to its knees. While he’d hobbled around lost, Manila had suffered the worst urban street fighting in the Pacific War. It had lasted for over a month and left the city in ruins.

  Even so, optimism wove through the streets, alleys, neighborhoods, and communities that edged the rivers and bay. A heartbeat remained, growing stronger.

  By now the victory celebrations had ended.

  The city had turned to rebuilding.

  As they drove, Zenji could hardly take it all in. What a waste it had all been, the killing, the destruction. Had it really been necessary?

  Of course.

  Japan had lost way more than it ever gained, and innocent people throughout the Pacific had suffered for it.

  Then his driver told him about suffering of unimaginable proportions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been flattened by two horrific atomic bombs. The alien shock had finally brought the war in the Pacific to an end.

  Zenji could not grasp such destruction. Japan was still the country where his parents were born, and it was nearly as important to him as his own.

  All those innocent people.

  Why, why, why had so much gone so wrong?

  Back at headquarters, Zenji looked for time to be alone, walking, sitting, dreaming, meditating. He also tried to find out where Freddy and Benny had ended up, and Esteban Navarro. But there was no credible information available, so he left messages with people he knew to contact him if something came up.

  He prayed that they were safe.

  Alive.

  It was so amazing. To breathe, to think and feel.

&nbs
p; He needed strength, and hope.

  And he needed to call home.

  But there was a problem—his mother spoke only Japanese, and it was forbidden to speak Japanese on calls in the Pacific. He could speak to his mother only through Colonel Blake, and Colonel Blake had to find a translator because he couldn’t understand Ma.

  It took two days, but people at HQ and the colonel worked it out.

  Zenji stood in a hallway, the phone on a small table. “Ma,” he said in English, because he had to. She didn’t understand, but she could hear his voice. “I’m okay, Ma. I’m coming home soon.”

  On the other end of the line he could hear his mom speaking through tears to the translator, and the translator to Colonel Blake.

  Colonel Blake came on the line. “Zenji, my God, we’re overjoyed! Your mother is too shocked to speak, and happy, very, very happy. We’d thought that you hadn’t made it. They told us you’d been captured and were missing, and could even be dead.”

  “Yeah, it was … something.”

  “We’re all so proud of you, son.”

  “Sir, can you tell Ma I’m fine? And that I’ll be home soon, I hope.”

  “I will, and don’t worry about your mother. We’ll take care of her. Hey, your sister wants—”

  “Zenji?” Aiko was sobbing.

  Tears flooded Zenji’s eyes. “Aiko.”

  “You’re alive!”

  “I’m fine. Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. Henry taking good care of you? Are you staying out of trouble?”

  “I’m older now. You’ve been gone four years. Four years! I don’t do trouble anymore.”

  Zenji laughed. “And I’m older, too.”

  If she only knew. Would he ever tell her what he’d been through? He would never tell anyone! He’d bury it deep.

  “When are you coming home?”

  “Don’t know. They got me doing some work here, translating.… I think they’re going to use me in court, too. War crimes. That’s the rumor.”

  “Sounds bad.”

  “Yeah.… Hey, where’s Henry?”

  “He couldn’t get off for a phone call, can you believe it?

  Not even for this. He said you’re a hero.”

  “He did?”

  “He has a nice girlfriend. Yasuko. He’s the head of his department now.”

  “Bound to happen. He works hard.”

  “Hey, remember Nami and Ken? They’re going to be sooo happy to hear that you’re coming home!”