“Who are those men over there?” Christian asked Perko, pointing to a small group farther away. “Why aren’t they with the others?” He watched as an American guard stripped a young prisoner naked and dragged him across the grass to the group of men.
“Them?” said Perko. He was smoking the very end of a cigarette and took a long inhale. He managed one more before he dropped the butt in the pile he had between his legs. “We just got that group. They tied themselves to the trees, if you can believe that. We’ve been shooting and shooting, up and up, waiting for those bastards to fall out like buzzards. But even the dead ones stayed up there. Tied to the branches. Sampson’s dealing with them now. He speaks some Jap,” he said pointing.
“How come Sampson speaks Japanese?” Christian asked, watching him scream at the men.
“He’s from San Francisco,” said Perko. “Grew up with Japs. He can’t really speak it all that well; he just knows a mighty fine amount of curse words. Want to know how to say ‘go fuck your mother’ in Japanese?”
“Not especially,” said Christian, handing him one of his expertly rolled cigarettes. He left Perko and headed toward the group of men beyond the line of leafless palm trees. By the time he reached them, Sampson had walked off. Christian forced himself not to make eye contact. He went a few yards farther and stood in a small grove of trees that somehow had escaped the bombing. He turned to sit down, but scrambled backward when he spotted another prisoner, this one alone.
Christian stared at him. He was stark naked and blindfolded. The cloth covering his eyes was a ripped piece of an American military uniform. Christian walked slowly over to where he was huddled next to a large palm tree. His chest was moving up and down quickly, and he was trying to feel around with his bound hands. Christian knelt down and put his hand in the man’s. He glanced around to make sure he was still alone, then pulled off the blindfold. Startled, the man looked at Christian, and Christian looked back squarely into his dark, terrified eyes. As fast as he could, he took the knife out of his pocket and cut the rope tying the man’s hands together and his body to the tree. He picked up the rope and placed it in the prisoner’s hands. No point leaving evidence of how he’d been cut free. The man stared at him, as if in shock, and Christian helped him stand up. They looked at each other a moment longer, then Christian said one of the ten Japanese words that Emi had taught him. Hashitte. Run.
CHAPTER 31
EMI KATO
MAY–DECEMBER 1944
By the end of May, Emi, Ernst Abrus—the Polish teenager, who Emi soon learned was a Jewish refugee, in Japan since 1937—and his accomplice Kenji Magara, the young boy thin enough to get through the fence, had made two trips to the German farm and had taken chickens and, quite by accident, a baby goat. It had wandered near the fence, away from its mother, and Kenji had been able to slit its throat without climbing through. They all knew the smart thing to do was to take it alive and use it as a milking goat, but they couldn’t risk removing a live animal. Kenji, whose father worked as a butcher before he was sent to war, could slit an animal’s throat silently. It was why Ernst had recruited him.
With the group’s learned patience, waiting in the woods until an animal came close enough to them, they had stolen enough meat to improve the health of all their families. Kenji had taught Emi how to use every single part of the animal, down to the feet and bone marrow, and she had been able to make a single chicken last nearly a month.
After the second trip, Yuka questioned where Emi was getting the food. “From the Germans,” she’d said, not specifying by what means. Because, in the two months that Emi had taken over the cooking, Jiro’s face began to look normal again, Yuka did not press her.
When the three went back to the German farm in June, sure to always avoid each other in town until a trip needed to be planned, Ernst said he thought there were others stealing food.
“We have to be more careful this time,” he said as the truck rattled up the familiar path. They had decided to go much later in the day and it was nearly midnight when they approached the farm. “I heard a woman in town, a Japanese woman, talking about a miracle goat that her son had brought home. That he had found it lost in the woods.”
“Who was the woman?” asked Emi. She had gotten to know the townspeople very well in her six months there.
“I don’t know. A thin, hungry woman, just like the rest of them,” he said, turning on another road when he saw the headlights of a car traveling in their direction.
“Everyone is starving now,” said Emi. “It’s much worse than last year. I’m not surprised that we’re not the only ones.”
“We just can’t be the ones to get caught,” said Ernst. “Wouldn’t that be a pity? Because then we could never get married.” He put his arm around Emi, who plucked it off, though she let it rest a few seconds longer than she had the month before. She cursed in Polish, something Ernst had been teaching her on their long nights standing in the woods, and pointed at the little road that took them near the farm. Behind them, Kenji was asleep, his face young and peaceful. How unfair, thought Emi, to be putting a nine-year-old child like him through such tests of war.
Emi got out of the car first, walking to the front of the farm where the German guards kept watch. Their numbers changed—the first time there was only one, the next time three—but their conversations barely differed. They talked about what they were going to do when they got home—what they would eat, the women they would have, the places they would go. And arbitrarily, they would patrol the farm. When one took off on foot, Emi would motion to Ernst, who would then make sure Kenji wasn’t near the fence, but on that late night in May, Emi stopped short before she got close enough to the guards to hear them. For the first time since they’d been going up into the hills, the pigs were out.
Making their way slowly around the grass in the dark were about a dozen fat pink pigs. She looked at them shocked, trying to determine if they would be able to fit them through the fence or not. Instead of moving to the guards like she was supposed to, she ran back to Ernst and told him.
“We need one,” he said excitedly, motioning for Kenji to follow him. “I don’t think we can carry more than one, but we should take it out alive.”
When the three of them were close enough to the fence to see the animals, Kenji shook his head. “They won’t fit through the wires. Maybe we can get a smaller one.”
“We have time,” said Ernst, refusing to give up on the several-months supply of food grunting in front of him.
“Have you ever slaughtered a pig?” asked Kenji, getting down on the ground to assess them further.
“No,” said Ernst. “I’m from Warsaw.” He followed Kenji’s lead and said, “Just don’t do a good job. Cut the suckers lengthwise and slip them through.”
“If he says he can’t, he can’t,” said Emi, putting her hand on Kenji’s slight shoulder. “It’s not worth the risk.”