Memories In Ink

Chapter Eleven: Operation Detatchment

  February 19th, 1945. The early morning air, accompanied by the salty mist of the ocean filled my nose. Although I wasn't part of the navy, or the marines, I was ordered, along with the rest of my unit, to go and help fight for Iwo Jima. "Get ready men!" The jumpmaster exclaimed as we all stood up. I hooked my static line onto the cable. "Man okay!" Rang out into the fuselage of the plane as we all checked our parachutes. The light lit up above the jumpmaster. "Let's go ladies!" He shouted as he lunged out of the plane. One by one we jumped. Although I was used to it now, I was still nervous as could be. The forceful wind was jabbing at my face, taking my breath away. As we shuffled closer, I pulled my goggles down onto my face. I was next. The salty ocean air hit my face in a rush as I grabbed onto both sides of the fuselage. I took a deep breath, and lunged out of the plane. As the static line caught, the parachute sprang open into the air, flapping furiously with the wind. The forceful air lunged into my nose, making it difficult to keep my breathing under control. As I was suspended in the air, I could see the other paratroopers slowly touching down. The rumble of the C-47 dissipated behind me, as Garry flew off. As the island slowly came more into view, I began seeing blood fly underneath me. Japanese soldiers were rushing out troops, taking them out one by one. I began saying my prayers as the wind pulled against my parachute. About 50 feet from the ground, a bullet whizzed past me. I grabbed the front lead straps, trying to pull in for a landing. Another bullet whizzed at me, and shot right through my parachute. My weight suddenly lunged full force at the fast approaching ground. I quickly reached for my reserve chute, but to no avail, it would not deploy. I panicked and began trying to steer the parachute in any direction. As I was about 20 feet from the ground, the parachute completely lost its grasp of air, and I plummeted to the ground.
The faint sound of screams woke me from my daze as I lay on the ground. As I tried to get up, Bridgeman landed beside me, with a bullet in his forehead. His cold, lifeless body lay beside me, with no hope or life in his eyes. I struggled to get up, but something was holding me down with great force. I looked to my right, to see stubs, bleeding profusely. He slowly looked up at me, with fear in his eyes. He began to open his mouth, as blood slowly poured out of his nose. "We're not gonna ma-". A gunshot erupted into the air as his brains exploded onto my face. Stubs was dead. And i wasn't far behind him. As I tried desperately to reach for my 1911, a Japanese soldier started running full force at me. I exerted all of my strength to reach for my pistol. As I began to grab it, a sharp pain behind my left eye left me limp. As I lay there screaming, the soldier grabbed my shoulders and began to drag me. I locked as hard as I could, attempting to make an escape. Unfortunately all I did was stir up dust and make the soldier even angrier. As I kept struggling, the butt of his pistol slammed into the back of my head.
As I came to, the low drone of a truck motor filled my ears. I slowly opened my eyes to see a wake of dust being left by the truck I was in. I shook my head and attempted to stand. The truck hit a bump, jarring me and shoving me back down onto the cold metal bed of the box truck. I gained my balance and shot back up. I turned around to see the small window located at the back of the cab. I peeked into the stained, cloudy haze of glass to see the driver. I began to beat on the glass. "Let me go, you shit faced commie!" I screamed as my fists met the back of the truck. The driver ignored be and kept following the signs ahead. I strained my eyes through the stained glass, but barely able to see. As I started look out I saw a sign. The sign was white and looked fairly new. The sign read: "ASOマイニングカンパニー" I was not sure what it meant, as I did not speak Japanese. I beat on the glass harder, allowing my shackles to clank from the tension. I kept banging. The abrupt thud of my hands against the glass did nothing. I kept banging, when I thought I did enough I did it more and more. My voice began to cripple as I kept screaming full force at the window. Finally I gave up. I eased my back onto the cold metal wall of the box and slid down. I pulled out the picture of Sarah and flipped it over. Her beautiful face was the only thing keeping me sane at this point.
I must have fallen asleep, because the jolt of the trucks braking startled me. As I slowly opened my eyes, the moon was poking its way up over the mountains. Unaware of where I was, i shot up. The driver door to the truck slammed shut as I was able to gain my balance. The thud of footsteps trailed along the outside of the box until the soldier's face met mine. The soldier was short, with a very wrinkled face. He looked at me in pure anger and disgust. He began screaming in Japanese, as he climbed into the truck and unhooked my shackles from the floor of the truck. The warm air circled around in the truck as I was unhooked. The soldier smelt of cigarette smoke and sweat as he threw me to the ground out of the truck. The side of my head hit hard into the dirt, making my vision blur. The soldier pulled me up by the shackles, and escorted me into the camp. As the gates opened, I could see Japanese soldiers peering down on me from the towers as if I were the scum of the earth. The soldier yanked on my shackles to make me move faster, jarring my wrists. As we got inside, I noticed a series of what looked to be mine shafts. I could see at least 3 in sight, there were probably more. The soldier escorted me into a white brick building, stationed at the back side of the camp, with a steel cell door on it. The soldier yanked me along as he fumbled out his keys. The keys made a distinct metallic jingle that I would never forget. The cell door let out a big clank as it unlocked and was swung open. The soldier pulled me into the dark corridor, revealing a series of six cells, three on each side. He led me down to the very last one on the right and unlocked the door. The dust picked up in the night air, slightly reflecting from the partial glimpses of moonlight. As the cell door swung open, the soldier shoved me into the cell and slammed the door. I hit the ground hard as my head slammed into the concrete wall adjacent to the cell door. The hit was so hard it temporarily impaired my vision. As I lay there in pain, the door slammed, locked, and away the soldier went. My head was pounding, my ears were ringing, and I could taste blood from the impact into the wall. I pushed myself up off of the wall and limped over to the cot on the right side of the room. As I lay on my back, the moonlight slightly shined through the lone window in the cell, casting slight shadows onto the wall I was facing. I reached into my pocket, and pulled out Sarah's picture. "I'm scared. I'm more scared than I've ever been. I don't know what to do now, I don't know if I'll ever see you again. I love you Sarah. I love you." I said while staring at the picture. A single tear streamed down my nose and landed on the picture. I placed the picture back into my shirt pocket and slowly drifted off to sleep.
The abrupt slam from the cell across from me awoke me from my slumber. Where was I? I couldn't remember. I sat up quickly, my head still pounding hard. The sunlight danced off of the wall and into my eyes. My left eye had a slight pain behind it, I couldn't explain it. As I went to stand up, I lost my balance and fell back into the dirt, emitting a cloud of dust to come up into my vision. I woke back up to what I thought had only been a few minutes. As I crawled over to the window and stood up slowly, to my surprise it was once again pitch black night. I was starving, I felt like I hadn't eaten in days. I slowly looked around the cell, trying to understand why I was there. "Hey! You're awake now!" A voice rang out. I looked around once more, straining into the darkness. "Over here!" The voice said. I looked toward the cell across from mine, to see a short man trying to talk to me. I walked over to my cell door and grabbed on to it to keep me up. "Everett! You're alive! It's me, George!" The man said in an almost relieved tone of voice." I stared blankly at the man. "Come on! It's me! We need to get the hell outta here!" He said once more. I stood there, in a state of confusion. "I don't know who you are. And I don't know why I'm here." I said as I put my hand up to my face in pain. "You have to remember me!" The voice said. I closed my eyes tightly, bowed my head, and tried as hard as I could to remember, however I couldn't. Before I could say another word, the main cell door flew open, creaking as it came to rest. Another soldier was being wrestled in by the Japanese. The soldier tried with all of his might to fight against the Japanese man, but to no avail. The Japanese soldier grabbed him by the neck and slammed him to the ground, right next to my cell. As the soldier was slammed onto the ground, a small, black notebook fell out onto the dirt floor of the building. I slowly looked up at the soldier to see if he noticed. The Japanese soldier was too busy wrestling him, shoving him into the cell. The soldier slammed the cell door, and left the building. The dust finally settled as the prisoner next to me began coughing. I could not see him due to the stone wall in between us. "Harold! It's me, Geroge! You survived too?" George asked as he aimed his sight towards the cell left of me. The man next to me was silent. "Hey! Hey wake up!" The man did not reply to George. "Shit" George exclaimed as he stepped further away from the cell door. I bent down and reached for the notebook laying in the cold hard dirt. As I picked up the note book and dusted it off, my sharp pain behind my left eye came back. I doubled over in pain, groaning as I dropped the notebook. The man across from me tried speaking to me, but all I could hear was ringing.
I woke again, to the thud of a soldier's footsteps. The soldier slowly approached my cell, throwing an apple in through the gap of the bars. "Eat!" The soldier said as he threw the other man an apple, and walked out of the building. The door slammed hard as I bit into my apple. The sweet juices sent me into a trance. It was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten in my life, being so hungry. I ate as much as I could off of the apple, then threw the core out of the window. As I sat on the cot, my memory began to come back slowly. I quickly grabbed the notebook and pen and began vigorously writing down everything I could remember. From Sarah, to mother, even basic training.
My memory maintained itself throughout most of the day. I was able to write down most of my past including that past year in a short time. As I continued to write, all of my emotions came flooding into me all at once. I was so lucid at this point. I could remember my name, and everything that had happened. "It's over, it's over, my memory is back, and I can get the hell out of here!" I thought to myself as I tucked the notebook up under the cot and laid on my back to try and sleep.
The clack of the lock to my door woke me. I sat up as the morning sun rays blinded my eyes. The soldier jerked me to my knees, causing them to dig into the dirt. "Work time!" The soldier said in broken English. He jerked me to my feet and pulled me down the corridor. The strange, yet familiar man across form me tried to speak to me, but I couldn't remember his name. The soldier drug me along with the chains of the shackles as he stepped quickly, stirring up the dust into my eyes. As the dust settled I looked up to see a small wooden shack, barely standing on it own in the summer sunlight.
         The soldier opened the splinter infested wooden door to the shack, revealing a cold, metal elevator within it. The soldier drug me into the elevator and pushed the button. The slow whir of the elevator droned out my heavy breathing as we slowly descended downward. I looked up at the soldier, the soldier squinted his eyes and gave me a fowl look. I bit my tongue as I brought my attention back to the door of the elevator. As the elevator came to a sudden stop, the soldier grabbed my shackles and yanked me out of the elevator. The soldier grabbed a pickaxe and handed it to me, shoving it into my chest. I grabbed the pickaxe and looked at him. "Work!" The soldier said as he backed away, keeping a watch on me at a distance. I slowly turned away from him, as the cool air from underground shilled my torso through the rips of my uniform. I began picking at the rock wall in front of me. Chips of rocks began to fly into my face as I kept picking into the mineral infused rock wall. As the pick hit once more, it triggered something. When the pick emitted the sound of contact something came into my vision. It was the vision of a man lying next to me in the dirt, getting shot in the head. I quickly dropped the pick as I came to, trying to rub my eyes and shake the effects of the vision off. As I rubbed my eyes the soldier eased up behind me. "Work!" He screamed as I looked back at him disgusted, picking up the pick once more.
          From then on, I worked every day in the mines. Once it became routine, my mind seemed to operate better than it had since my first occurrence of memory loss. I would work during the day, and write in my notebook at night. I would regularly talk to the man who's cell was across from mine, as he claimed he knew me. I would shiver during the night, and sweat profusely during the days of work, causing me to constantly lose weight. The verbal and physical abuse never stopped for us prisoners, we were slave driven during the day, as well as abused every morning. The daily food was no more than a rotten apple, or small portions of raw fish. Many nights I sat up on my cot, throwing up the rotten food that I had tried to ingest, I wasn't getting the nutrition I needed, none of us were. The more days went by, the worse the vision in my left eye became, leaving nothing more than a hazy film within my vision.
          I kept track of the number of days by marking on the stone wall with a small chip of rock. Through the routine abuse, and the constant staggering memory, months began to pass as if they were days.  Three months in I attempted to escape, although it didn't turn out well, seeing as how I could not understand the Japanese labeling on the plane I attempted to fly, and lack of fuel. I stood up from my cot, grabbing my leg in pain, I lifted my pant leg up to reveal several bruises from the routinely beatings I had been administered. I limped over to the wall, with the one good eye I still had, and marked another day. I stood there, breathing heavily as I counted the marks. 181 days. I couldn't believe I had been in this cell for that long. Six months in total, without proper food, or care. I peeked under my cot to see my journal, laying on the cold dirt floor. I reached into the cold dirt to retrieve the journal. I eased back up onto my cot, and began reading my life story once more, until a soldier holding a gun, trying to help me escape, came into my cell.