Change was in the air. For reasons I couldn’t quite identify, a shift in the war had seemed to settle in my bones. By May 26, a new quietness floated through our camp. The sounds of cannons and rifles were no longer ringing in our ears. Bombs weren’t exploding. We’d all seen The Wizard of Oz and hoped that we had landed somewhere on the other side of Dorothy’s rainbow.
“Major Shaw,” Sergeant McQuiston asked, “you ever get the feeling that the anchor’s been pulled up and the boat’s about to move?”
I laughed. “Hey, you’ve gone navy on me.”
“No, I mean it. My skin is taking a new reading on what’s going on. Something’s different.”
“Well, Sergeant, the word I’m getting from Command is that the Japanese appear to be retreating. I got a hunch that they’re running out of men. We’ve killed a truckload of them and that’s got to be bringing their show to a halt.”
I looked around at our crew. The men seemed unusually relaxed. The usual pressure and nervousness weren’t there. Maybe . . . maybe, we had come to a new turn in the road. We’d discovered that the fierce resistance that we had faced had actually come from well-placed pillboxes and machine-gun nests that were run by a relatively small force. The actual situation became clear when Lieutenant Colonel John Williams led the 381st in the capture of Sugar and Cutaway Hills. Williams had taken the place of Colonel Halloran, who’d contracted a severe case of the flu. When the 381st marched into no-man’s-land, they found the hills littered with Japanese bodies. The Japanese made an attempt at resistance on Charlie Hill, but the defense turned out to be more a suicide action. During the remainder of the day, the Third Battalion encountered only slight opposition. We were definitely on the move.
However, that relaxed movement didn’t mean all resistance had vanished. We still had work to do. The Second Battalion of the 382nd Infantry had to clean out Hen and Hector Hills. On the back side of Hen Hill, the Japanese had a six-foot trench and were still tossing grenades over the top. G Company and PFC Clarence Craft walked into the encounter.
Craft was a California boy from the town of Santa Ana. Usually a mild sort of guy, he ended up right in the middle of the struggle to take Hen Hill.
The sergeant called out that the enemy were directly over the hill right in front of Private Craft.
Craft said he knew that they were just on the other side of the ridge.
The sergeant warned that they were slinging hand grenades at us.
Craft yelled back that if our boys would keep the explosives coming, he’d lob them over the hill.
So the sergeant lined up four men into a supply line, which handed grenades from man to man until they were in Craft’s hand. In turn, he hurled the grenades over the hill. The explosives kept shaking the top of the ridge, but the Japanese didn’t give. Eventually, Private Craft hurled three cases of grenades at the enemy. Abruptly, a Japanese stuck his head up and peered over the hill. Instantly, the private grabbed his rifle and hit the Japanese square in the forehead with the rifle butt. The man sprawled on top of the ridge.
Craft dropped back, reloaded the rifle, and leaped over the top of the hill. A dozen Japanese were lined up in the trench in front of him.
Craft yelled “Surprise!” and started shooting.
Most of the Japanese were so stunned, they only stared. A couple fired at him, but he shot them.
The private charged into the trench, killing all the Japanese nearby. At the other end, ten Japanese grabbed bamboo spears and charged straight at him.
Private Craft hissed and shot all ten.
By himself, Private Clarence Craft had cleared out the trench. But he wasn’t done. Without stopping, he jumped out of the trench and saw that, not far in front of him, the Japanese were setting up a machine gun. Without breaking his stride, he threw a grenade straight at them and hit the ground.
The explosion sent shrapnel flying in all directions. When Craft looked up, the three Japanese were humped over the barrel of the machine gun. Dead.
Musing out loud that he was slowing them down, Craft got back on his feet.
Ahead of him, the private recognized the outline of a cave. No question but that Japanese were in there. He grabbed a satchel charge and slung it at the entrance. Craft waited. Nothing happened.
Fearlessly crawling to the cave, he saw the explosive sitting inside near the entrance. Apparently, the firing mechanism hadn’t gone off. Craft stood up, walked in, pulled out the satchel, and adjusted it. He threw it back in.
The explosive shook the ground. Smoke rolled out of the cave. The mortar had done its job. The private walked in. Lying on the ground was a Japanese officer. Craft paused only to pick up his ceremonial swords.
By this time the rest of the Second Battalion had started over the hill. The men had stood on the back side staring when Craft took off on his own. His example had spurred them forward.
The soldiers couldn’t believe what this private had done on his own. He’d killed the enemy like a one-man army. Fellow soldiers began gathering around Craft.
A sergeant observed that he’d wiped out the bandits all by himself. He had an unusual sound of respect in his voice.
One soldier noticed that he had picked up a sword.
Craft said he knew that if he didn’t get it first, the guys over there in the Ninety-Sixth would pick the area clean of all souvenirs. “I just wanted to get mine before they came hopping in.”
The men laughed.
Craft urged the men to keep moving onward.
Over seventy Japanese had been killed in the attack. PFC Clarence Craft had killed somewhere between twenty-five and thirty of them. A few months later, he received a presidential summons to come to Washington. President Harry Truman placed the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck. His valor had not gone unrecognized.
* * *
On May 31, the 383rd found no resistance as they approached the town of Shuri. For days, this elusive objective had seemed almost impossible to reach. Artillery had pounded the entire area, but the Japanese persisted in their efforts to hang on to it. Now we walked in from one end and the marines came in from the other. Artillery fire had turned the town into a pile of rubble. The emaciated bell tower of a Christian mission stood like a ghost above the surrounding town, where the remains of the wooden buildings looked like toothpicks in a sea of broken concrete and split rocks. The Japanese had once made their headquarters in the ancient Shuri Castle. Now all that stood was the skeleton of three remaining walls towering over hunks of twisted steel and slabs of cement. About the only entity still recognizable was a network of tunnels underneath the castle’s remains. The Japanese had used another escape network to get out of the city.
The cost for our soldiers to walk in so casually had been the lives of 2,074 of our boys. However, the Japanese had lost 8,500 at least, trying to defend this area. The only way we marched through was that heroic fighting men had laid their lives on the line day after day.