CHAPTER 28
Enslaved
It was the darkest moment of Louie’s life. The Bird stood over him, triumphant. I am in command, he said. You will obey.
Commander Fitzgerald forked forward on his crutches and assumed the duties of senior POW. Ringing with shock, Louie picked himself up and hiked to the barracks, a tumbledown warehouse on the edge of a cliff over the Hokura River. Wind whistled through the walls, snow fell through holes in the roof, and rats trotted along the baseboards. The beds were planks; the bedding was loose straw. To survive subzero temperatures, the POWs had pried up and burned the floorboards, leaving gaping holes. The three hundred residents, mostly Australians, were stick figures, wearing the ragged summer uniforms in which they’d been captured years before.
POWs at Naoetsu.POWs at Naoetsu.

AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL, NEGATIVE NUMBER 6033201

POWs at Naoetsu.

Stacked against a wall were dozens of boxes, some of which had spilled gray ash to the floor. These were the cremated remains of sixty POWs—one in every five—who’d died here, most from relentless physical abuse. Of the many hells Louie had known in war, this would be the worst.
Naoetsu was almost lethally cold. Each night of shivering ended before dawn, when Louie was forced outside for roll call in deep snow and howling wind. By day, he huddled with Tinker and Wade, fighting worsening diarrhea and fever. The Naoetsu rations—mostly seaweed—didn’t help him. Because all the guards smoked American cigarettes, the prisoners knew the Red Cross was sending relief boxes. The POWs got nothing.
Louie’s transfer back to the Bird was no coincidence. Watanabe, whom the Aussies called “Whatabastard,” had handpicked him, almost certainly to torment him. Almost the moment Louie walked into camp, the Bird was on him. Louie took his beatings with defiance, provoking the Bird to ever more violent attacks. He descended back into a state of profound stress.
And yet Louie was lucky. Naoetsu was a war production village, and the enlisted POWs were its slaves. Each day, they were marched to factories, a steel mill, and barges, doing dangerous, backbreaking labor in shifts of some eighteen hours. At the shifts’ ends, Louie saw men rambling in, some so exhausted they had to be carried. The Japanese literally worked men to death at Naoetsu. Louie had much to bear, but because he was an officer, at least he didn’t have that.
Winter faded; the snow melted. A pig appeared. All winter, he’d been living in a snow cavern, sustained by food dropped to him by an Australian. Louie looked at him in wonder. The animal’s skin had become see-through.
The six-mile walk was tiring, but the work, tending potatoes, was easy, and Ogawa was placid. And because they were working, the officers were granted full rations. Though rations were dwindling as Japan’s fortunes fell, a full bowl of seaweed was better than half a bowl of seaweed.
Followed by innumerable eyes, the plane made a lonely arc from one horizon to the other. It dropped no bombs, but its appearance showed how far over Japan the Americans were venturing, and how little resistance the Japanese could offer. The POWs were elated. The Japanese were unnerved, none more than the Bird.
A few days later, Ogawa teased Watanabe about his lazy laborers. He meant no harm, but the remark sent the Bird into a fury. He shouted for the farm workers to line up, then stormed and frothed, thoroughly deranged.
The next morning, as the officers were marched into slavery, the Bird watched. He was smiling.
The officers were taken to the river and crowded onto a barge heaped with coal. Six were given shovels; Louie and the rest had large baskets strapped to their backs. On the guards’ orders, the shovelers began heaving coal into the baskets. A cubic foot of coal can weigh as much as sixty pounds, so the bearers were soon staggering. With the guards screaming at them, they were hounded off the barge and up the riverbank to a railcar, where they wobbled up a narrow ramp, dumped the coal, and returned to have their baskets refilled.
All day, the men labored. By the time they were allowed to stop, they were utterly spent: by Wade’s estimate, each basket bearer had carried well over four tons of coal.
He was hustled into the ship’s hold, to a giant dome of coal beside a large hanging net. He was given a shovel, and the guards were suddenly teeming around him, cracking him with clubs. Hour after hour, Louie stooped over his shovel in a swirl of shouting guards and black dust, heaving coal into the net. At last, at day’s end, the work was halted. The POWs were so caked in coal that they were indistinguishable.
Every morning, the men were sent to their shovels again. Every night, they dragged back to the barracks, black ghosts trudging in and falling onto their bunks, weary to their bones, spitting black saliva. Occasionally, Louie was switched from coal to industrial salt; the work was just as taxing, and the salt liquefied in his sweat and ran down his back, burning cracks in his skin.
Tragedy was inevitable. One day, as Louie stood on the barge, awaiting his jump to the ship, the man ahead mistimed his leap. Crushed between the vessels, he crumpled onto the barge. The guards hardly paused, pushing Louie to step past the man and jump. Louie never learned whether the man survived.