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Overview
Following the final, crushing moments of World War II, Japanese officer Kiyoshi Tsurifune, Sergeant Jones Henry, and Resistance fighter Swede Scorden struggle to regain normalcy and any contact with the shimmering, fish-filled sea. Lost honor, fallen friends, their cultural identities gone in the wake of a nuclear blast—these fishermen-turned-soldiers have a long way to go until they regain the waters in which they feel most at home.
But as each man finds his way to the bays of Alaska—Jones as a fisherman, Swede eager for work in the cannery, Kiyoshi an ambassador for the Japanese trade—life on the Pacific isn’t as easy as he’d dreamed. A new union calls for a strike during the height of the salmon season, and expensive new engine boats on Bristol Bay are replacing the sails and oars that fisherman like Jones have relied on for years. Plus, unhealed wounds make the impending deal that would allow Japanese ships to fish Alaskan waters painful for many. Behind every conversation, the question looms: Will these men ever find peace again?
In this sweeping and powerful prequel to Highliners, Breakers, and Raiders, William McCloskey is back and better than ever. Warriors is a meditation on the eternal struggle of finding normalcy after war and how quickly the world can leave you behind.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781510719231 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 06/20/2017 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 1,072,180 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Caged
OKINAWA, AUGUST 1945
A pistol would have done it. It could have been with that pistol they took from his belt. The insult! To revive him with medicine when he had ordered himself to die. It was the fault of the soldier whose gaze had fixed with his soon after his capture. Captain Kiyoshi Tsurifune knew enough English to understand the man's order — from English studied long ago, in a different world where dealing with barbarians was integral to the family business passed from father to son for decades.
If only they had shot him during capture as they had some of the others. If he had not been stunned by the explosives thrown into the cave, if he had strode toward them boldly as had young sub-lieutenant Kiji — with a concealed grenade ready to take at least one of them with him. Kiji had died a hero's death. The Americans had shot him in the chest — only moments before the armed grenade blew him apart. This angered the Americans, who had shot others of his group — anyone who made even the least move. In other circumstances Kiyoshi had given those same orders. Shoot the prisoners — even those with hands up for surrender — if they made the slightest step forward.
"That's for my dead buddy you yellow bastards!" one of the Americans had yelled before shooting two Japanese soldiers. Kiyoshi hoped indeed that some of those the American called his "buddies" had been righteously killed for the Emperor.
In the fetid cave where they had lived like rats in dark and mold for weeks, waiting to kill the Americans when the invasion came, hatred for all but anyone Japanese was clear enough. Even worthless local villagers, cringing disgracefully and screwing up their Chinese-like faces, were driven away when they too tried to use the caves after the shelling began. Those villagers that were not even useful for providing food, for they proved to have none themselves; inferiors who would have quickly revealed hidden stores under even lightest torture.
Now he was not even allowed an honorable death through starvation. The captors brought him food. Rice, of course, boiled to a clogged mush. The Americans had no understanding of how it ought to be prepared. Canned meat that smelled like dogs — Kiyoshi had to admit that perhaps it was better than the "meat" that was mostly weeds and sawdust to which they had become accustomed in the caves. But it was so rich that it cramped his stomach and worse. Yet he ate what they dished out onto his metal plate. At first he thought the meat's strange taste was poison, and he prepared calmly for the justified, agonizing death of the defeated. At least he would die without flinching. When this happened, his identity would be found in the worn canvas pouch of letters and photographs that was all he had managed to keep when he was captured. Hope, then, that perhaps merely the report of his death would reach home, but not the circumstance, and Father would be able to mourn a son lost in honorable combat for the Emperor.
Not that the eternal spirits would be fooled. He himself would never be a Righteous Soul enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine on Kudan Hill, like Junior Sub-Lieutenant Kiji. It appeared it was his doom to remain among the living, the vessel of his own disgrace.
He had prepared himself to suffer greatly as a prisoner. Yet even his wounds healed under enemy care. Now, instead of pain, his body produced such disgusting dysentery that he was often obliged to stagger or crawl in desperation to defecate into a stinking pit. A piece of canvas covering the pit trapped insufferable heat, and the stench attracted insects that bit any part of skin not covered by the rags of a once-proud uniform.
The Americans even humiliated officers as if they were only common soldiers. It was a mere American corporal who ordered them to strip and relinquish their clothes. They were sprayed with brackish seawater pumped by a small, noisy engine through a hose. The sudden pressure slapped their thin bodies against each other until they learned to brace against the gushing water. (And how the inferior American behind the hose laughed at their struggle!) Then, by gestures, they were made to cup their hands and scoop a thick, slimy liquid from a large can and smear themselves with it. One captor tapped each man's private and most tender parts with a stick unless the man rubbed in the liquid until it sudsed white. The liquid stung Kiyoshi's open sores and scraped like knives on the sores where the nested lice had bitten in a frenzy.
Then the hose would have been welcomed, but it was left to gush on the ground while their sweat dissolved the pasty liquid into long brown streaks. At last the hose again — washing off with its torrent both the dead lice and those still trying to bite. Finally the Americans splashed a bucketful of fresh, heated water over each man, half into the face and half toward the crotch. (How good that water felt despite the humiliation. Don't admit it, even to yourself.) And the final indignity: each man was ordered to pick and mash any lice that remained on the body of the man beside him. The prisoners did so in apologetic shame, avoiding each other's eyes.
The clothes, when they were returned to them, had been boiled clean. They were still hot and soggy, now shrunken and nearly shapeless, but the naked men hurried to cover themselves again.
It was an insult akin almost to torture to be made clean by the barbarian enemy. To be fed by them. Not beaten. Spoken to roughly, yes. Ordered about by the common ranks of their own soldiers. Deprived of an honorable death.
But the sun poured over the camp; it seeped through the shelters formed by swathes of canvas draped across poles. When rain fell, it settled into dripping pockets throughout the canvas. The raw chemical smells of disinfectant slowly replaced the odors of rot — except around the shit pits. Eventually the prisoners' clothes dried and took shape again around their bodies. The lice became so few that they could be sought out and killed with a pop of the fingers — this time, they didn't leave behind a dozen of their vermin brothers to make the picking a useless exercise.
When left to himself in the canvas shelter — the prisoners were too subdued to seek out one another's company — Kiyoshi's gaze wandered toward the sea. It formed lines of purifying blue beyond the fencing and past the heads of restless prisoners. It stretched in distant bands between hills and beyond the broken wings of a plane crashed into one of the squares of cultivated field.
In former days the sea had welcomed him as comfortably as home. From the desolate caves he'd stretched a hand toward goddess Sea. Daydreamed that her clean water washed the filth from his body. Now she beckoned as the ultimate home of the dead. Would drowned souls then live as gods? As restless spirits? As fish? Or, the greatest blessing of all, might the waters close over in simple blackness?
On that unbelievable night they said the Emperor appeared on the radio to announce surrender, when word traveled mouth to mouth among the prisoners, the sudden sound of booming guns made those around him hope. Hah. The surrender was a clever ruse, and now the Imperial troops were arriving to finish off the Americans. Shells exploded overhead, flashing in the night sky. The explosions were so great that hot metal from the broken shells singed through the prison shelters. Now it is that I am to die, he'd exulted, and I will be spared the disgrace of having submitted to capture. The thought did not fill him with the relief he would have felt only weeks before, even though he told himself — with tears in his eyes — that it did.
And then, after all, it was only the captors celebrating. The Emperor truly had surrendered. Reason enough for tears.
With acceptance that his entire nation was disgraced, Kiyoshi stopped thinking of personal death as the only way out. Surely not everyone should die. Looking back, the cleansing of the lice might have been the symbol of his return to life. All that the incident lacked in importance was the solemnity of a priest, as at one of the great shrines. He began to consider what life — not death — might lie ahead.
A father waited far away. And a mother, of course, both surely still living, although no letters had been exchanged for months. Were able to be exchanged. Father was the one face that remained vivid, the revered one he'd been trained to honor since boyhood. He was meant to follow him in the family enterprise. What of that now? And back home was a dead wife waiting to be mourned. His tender, sweet little Yokiko, who he had barely known except in childhood but married in haste before going to war.
The days after the surrender turned into long weeks. Daily rations of food and cigarettes began to be taken for granted. Anticipated. Criticized, even! And the small soap ration that provided a level of cleanliness beyond imagining during the months in caves and mud-slogged bunkers began to seem stingy in view of the American wealth of food and supplies. Those few prisoners to whom he deigned to talk — defeated officers like himself — complained so much that he felt ashamed. The Americans towered over the defeated. Barbarians, yes: big and loud. Voices deeper than those of the Japanese, less shrill when excited. He watched their confident progress. Men he might have liked if they hadn't been the enemy.
It remained hot even in pouring rain. And boring. Kiyoshi watched as ordinary Japanese soldiers marched off in groups with shovels or picks over their shoulders to do some kind of manual labor. At the very beginning he thought, yes, aha, they were being taken to dig their own graves after all, and his own death was still to come — whether he desired it now or not. But each night they returned, tired perhaps, but joking more and more, with enough cigarettes that they no longer needed to share. Their disgrace forgotten. Reluctantly, he envied them in his own enforced idleness.
With his energy slowly on the rise, he yearned to run and stretch. It so happened that two officers had also once trained in the ways of Jigoro Kano, and the three of them began to practice judo. Long abandoned during the rigors of burrowing in caves, preparing for attack; such hardships had sapped any will for excess movement. The three men gathered what rags and other soft material they could find for matting against the hard earth. At the outset they felled each other with slow ritual to conserve their fragile energy, though a decade previous, their dojo masters would have punished such soft restraint with shouts and blows. At first, just a few minutes of training left them staggering with fatigue. Days later they found themselves putting force behind basic moves and taking falls with less caution.
Some of the American soldiers began to watch from their lookout towers. Even called encouragement. One day an American shouted out, "Hey! Heads up!" and threw down a rolled rubber tent mat to replace their makeshift creation.
It was the same scowling sergeant who had matched stares with Kiyoshi weeks before. The one who had ordered him medical attention. The two men eyed each other once more. This time, before the sergeant turned away, Kiyoshi made a slight bow.
CHAPTER 2Sea Storm
SEPTEMBER 1945
One daybreak, as the prison camp was just beginning to stir, a Japanese interpreter suddenly moved among them calling, "War is over. Gather your possessions and be ready to move. There is a ship waiting to take you home!" The rumble around Kiyoshi rose to a roar as the men talked excitedly. Some wept. There was little to gather. Hours yet followed of waiting.
They lined up for a final meal dished from pots onto metal plates (which the interpreter told them to keep for the journey) then at last they were formed into groups of about twenty men. Each group marched out separately, accompanied front and rear by armed Americans riding in open vehicles.
The road was sometimes little more than a rutted path. They passed rusted out vehicles and even a crashed plane — one wing stuck high in the ground like a banner. Green vines had already begun to cover the wreckage, even though most of the terrain was shell-pocked and barren to the rock.
The stones hurt Kiyoshi's feet through boot soles worn thin as paper. The material was dried stiff and rotting, and it chafed raw against each ankle. Officers' boots were not designed for marches but for riding above the troops in vehicles like those the common American soldiers sat in so casually.
Kiyoshi's group passed through the remains of what had been a fishing village — to judge by the scattered nets. Only a few old Okinawan men and women were there to watch the prisoners pass by. Faces more Chinese than Japanese, wrinkled and thin. Short people, brown as the earth to which they seemed anchored. Most of them stared without emotion. Only one, a woman, caught Kiyoshi's gaze. She spat. Worthless peasant, he told himself, and turned away. But what would his own father and mother look like after years of war?
Death to expiate defeat would have been the easy way.
* * *
The group of marching prisoners had reached the edge of the shore. Small waves lapped nearly up to their feet. In the water waited a boxlike vessel that one had to enter by a ramp.
"Okay, move along. Move along there!" barked one of the American soldiers.
"You must advance quickly with no delay," the interpreter translated. "Go. Go. Others are coming behind you. Do not cause delay!"
"Hai, go!" snapped prisoner Captain Kiyoshi Tsurifune, and he led the way into the water.
Once aboard the vehicle, the seawater that had filled his decrepit boots dribbled through holes worn through at the ankles.
They were packed to standing for the trip to a warship at anchor, supporting each other shoulder to shoulder as the clumsy landing craft rolled and bounced. A man beside him — a common soldier — vomited on Kiyoshi's shoulder. Nothing to be done about it. Kiyoshi stared ahead as if he didn't notice and made no acknowledgment when the man tried to bow an apology in the serried quarters.
At the ship's side they were confronted by a clacking ladder constructed of footboards held together by rope, while their own craft surged up and down against the gray steel hull.
"Grab ahold and climb," shouted a voice above in English. "Look lively there!"
Another interpreter called down in Japanese: "You must one by one boldly grip the ropes and climb upward. This is necessary, so do it quickly."
One man found a handhold on the ropes just as a sea swell raised the slippery deck he was standing on. He cried out, loosed his grip, and fell back against the others hemming him. Some of the men began a mutter close to a moan.
"Oh shit," laughed one of the Americans at the ship's rail above. "This'll be a fuckin' circus. We got some kind of dip net aboard?"
Kiyoshi elbowed his way to the ladder. In the old days as a youth, he had ridden aboard fishing vessels and the mothership owned by Father and Grandfather. He knew what to do now.
"Watch," he commanded and grabbed the rope as the deck rose. "Take hold and then do not let go. Be courageous. Do not let them see you are afraid. Do not be disgraced by their laugh." Step by step he climbed the ladder until he was suspended beyond the surging rail of the barge. "You must move quickly to this height for safety," he called down. "Then, if necessary, stop for breath. Then quickly upward."
Panting, he reached the ship's rail, tried to mount gracefully, and ended by rolling over it on his belly.
"That's the way, baby," laughed one of the Americans, steadying Kiyoshi with a hand on his arm. The touch and voice were firm but friendly. Kiyoshi righted himself to bow, but the man had already turned his attention back to the ladder.
"Name. Rank. Age. Home province," an American sailor with a clipboard demanded impersonally. An interpreter beside him barked the questions in Japanese. Kiyoshi braced himself to attention and snapped crisp answers.
The American sailor stopped writing. A scar down his face exaggerated the hardness of his stare. "Yeah, yeah, fellah, act big. But you ain't a soldier now. Just one more Jap what needs to be shot or fed. How many of us did you kill? Wish I could ask that and put it in your record here. Tell him to stand over there until the rest of them come aboard."
The interpreter, a stiff, slight young Japanese, glanced uneasily at Kiyoshi. "Excuse me," he prefaced, and translated only the instruction.
Two other men clambered up the ladder successfully. Then one, already halfway up, fell back screaming.
"Oh man. Be here all night like this," said the friendlier of the two Americans. "Go tell the captain we'd better break out the fuckin' cargo net."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Warriors"
by .
Copyright © 2013 William B. McCloskey Jr..
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Prologue I: Okinawa, July 1945,
Prologue II: Okinawa, October 1945,
Part One,
1 Caged,
2 Sea Storm,
3 Kiyomizu Leap,
4 Home,
5 Reality,
6 Tokyo,
7 Born on the Fourth of July,
8 Fishboat,
9 Arnie Skovkus,
10 Creek Street,
11 Jones Married,
Part Two,
12 A Small World Stewing with Change,
13 Promised Land,
14 Boss Swede,
15 Mug-Up,
16 Becoming American,
17 Fish Pickers,
18 Delivery by Pew,
19 The Outsider,
20 Strikers,
21 Encounters,
22 Southeaster,
23 Good Rye Whiskey,
Part Three,
24 Jackson Pollock in Tokyo,
25 Prospecting Kodiak,
26 Crab Dreams,
27 Swede Sees Crabs,
28 Pioneers of American Fishing,
29 Aboard the Vessel Deep Sea,
30 Akutan,
31 Aleutian Dance,
32 Forbidden Hootch,
33 Decision,
Part Four,
34 Departure,
35 Factory Fleet,
36 Classified Secret,
37 No Secret at All,
38 Inundation,
39 Adak Rain,