Dragon of the Mangrooves Read online

  DRAGON OF THE

  MANGROVES

  INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS OF WORLD WAR II

  Under the lotus plants he lies down,

  In the covert of the reeds and the marsh.

  The lotus plants cover him with shade;

  The willows of the brook surround him.

  Job 40:21–22, Old Testament,

  The New American Standard Bible

  From the Author

  On February 19, 1945, when World War II was about to end, saltwater crocodiles killed nearly a thousand Japanese infantrymen trying to break through the siege of the Allies in a mangrove around Ramree Island, Burma (Myanmar). And by the next morning, no more than twenty men had survived.

  This story is known to some extent in former Allied countries, but it’s hardly circulated among the Japanese because we have no record verifying this in Japan. It was proven that no less than four hundred fifty soldiers made a safe return from the island to the continent, according to official war reports and many personal memo-randums. This means almost half the garrison was alive after the battle, which simply makes the casualties by crocodiles doubtful. But I do not believe the whole story is a downright falsity. During the World War II, Japanese occupation area was called the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, and it was largely overlapped with the habitat of saltwater crocodiles. There were many reports of crocodile attacks, not only in the Burma Campaign but also in other southern fronts.

  We tend to forget this kind of tale, compared with other atrocities of war.

  Still, I think this story tells of war and symbolizes it effectively. War is becoming more mechanized and computerized, but its core is unchanged. That’s why I wrote this book.

  In the nineteenth century, my great-great-grandfather was ordered by his feudal lord to go a long way to Edo (now Tokyo) to defend the coast against the oncoming American fleet, with only his ancient sword and armor to rely upon.

  When the Pacific War broke out in 1941, my father and one of my uncles were conscripted and became an Army artilleryman and a Navy airman, respectively.

  Both fought against the United States forces. Fortunately, they killed no one and came back alive. My ancestral history shows that some part of my family was ded-icated to fighting against foreigners. Of course, I have never fought with foreigners, apart from some fencing bouts and PC games. I appreciate this peace, and hope that it lasts forever.

  Those who have studied or who took part in the Burma Campaign will know that the real names of troops, battles, and places were used. I used real names to give the story a semblance of reality. However, all other things are fictional, and any resemblance to a real person is coincidental. As for the names of countries and races, I followed the descriptive usage of that time period for the same reason.

  The opening of the turret hatch cut into the morning sky of Bengal. Palm leaves rustled in the wind. But it was already intolerably muggy—like a sauna—inside the model ninety-seven tankette.

  Second Lieutenant Yoshihisa Sumi no longer heard the buzz of enemy planes, but he couldn’t still the rapid beating of his heart. He picked out a damp cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers. Cigarettes were precious and shouldn’t be wasted in such a squalid place. Still, he took a puff eagerly, as he had no other option to calm himself under the circumstances.

  Three or four enemy fighters had come on them as soon as Sumi’s Tankette Second Platoon had arrived at Taungup that early morning, following a hard run all night through the steep mountains of Arakan. All tankettes had immediately moved into this nearby jungle. He had been too frightened to discern whether they were American or British, to say nothing of their type. No matter what, he thought he had been done for a while in the din of engines and weapons fire permeating the jungle.

  A small Burmese National Army (BNA) soldier squatted by the turret. He

  seemed to feel no fear. His eyes moved rapidly, searching for enemy fighters.

  Sumi stuck out his head from the hatch timidly. It was so bright outside that it made him dizzy.

  “Have they gone, Pondgi?”

  “Master Sumi, it’s all right. I can’t see them anymore,” replied Pondgi.

  Sumi felt like a rodent that had escaped the talons of a bird of prey. Trying to block out this miserable feeling, he blew smoke out of his nostrils and said,

  “Well, it’s annoying enough. We have to drive away those Engli bastards as fast as we can.” He knew it was a thin lie. It was the Japanese being driven away from Burma.

  Pondgi still sat on the front hood and kept watching the sky. Pondgi had been with the Tankette Fifth Company of the Fifty-Fourth Reconnaissance Regiment, to which Sumi belonged since their platoon had left Rangoon. His Japanese pro-ficiency was remarkably high now.

  “Pondgi” wasn’t his real name. Japanese servicemen believed the word meant a Buddhist monk in Burmese. Soldiers called him Pondgi because the name suited this calm, young guy with a skin head. He also seemed to like it, because Buddhist monks were highly respected here in Burma.

  AWOL soldiers in the Burmese National Army had increased since the beginning of that year, 1945, and the number of overall troops had dropped sharply, as if it were keeping pace with the defeats of the Japanese Imperial Army. Now Burmese patience with their Asian conqueror was running out. Still, Pondgi never left them. He worked energetically every day. Sumi couldn’t understand what made him do so.

  At first, Sumi had to report his arrival at Taungup to his company commander, who had gotten there first. If machine troubles and the air raid had not slowed their progress, Sumi’s platoon would have been there by dawn. He ordered subordinates to maintain tankettes in the jungle and went to the headquarters of the 121st Infantry Regiment. It was actually a bamboo shack behind a half-wrecked

  temple at the edge of the town. Located on a strategic point of the Arakan front, it was often used by other troops as a communication spot.

  Sumi kept walking on the coast road, where the Indian Ocean wind drove away the morning haze. Then he spotted the grand roofs of the old temple through the woods. Two servicemen were standing at the gate. One was Captain Yoda, his company commander, and the other seemed to be one of the division staff officers, whom Sumi had seen once or twice. Yoda was a calm man by nature but that day looked fidgety. Nervousness pervaded the place. Yoda recognized Sumi, who was prepared to be reprimanded for the delay. Instead, Yoda relayed some unexpected news. “Sumi, I’ve gotten a new order by wireless from the division commander, and I think you are just the man for the duty. Bear in mind it’s a division order. You got that?”

  The company commander started reading a makeshift directive in a loud voice. “Second Platoon Commander, Second Lieutenant Sumi should organize a rescue party consisting of one squad, collect as many civilian boats as possible, and advance to Ramree Island with this party to help the Second Battalion of the 121st Infantry Regiment, a garrison of this island, evacuate to the continent…”

  Sumi almost fainted. He couldn’t listen to the rest. Even as a low-ranking officer from a reserve officer candidate school, he knew that the situation on the Ramree front was deteriorating. He had to sneak into a tremendously dangerous place and rescue a badly mauled garrison. Sumi realized he had just been assigned an incredibly perilous duty.

  In July 1944, the Japanese had miserably failed in Operation Imphal, the reckless offensive into India. The Army had lost nearly 55,000 men in the battle and to starvation during the retreat. Confronted with the Allies striking at full throttle after the victory, the Japanese Burma Area Army had already been repeating the debacle.

  The Arakan area, where the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army had been positioned to guard a southwestern Burma full of strategic points, w
as no exception.

  Starting with a recapture of the very northwestern air field Akyab on January 3, 1945, British-Indian forces were fiercely attacking this area. On January 12, an enemy commando brigade landed in the Myebon Peninsula, fifty kilometers east of Akyab, where the main force of the Fifty-Fourth Reconnaissance Regiment had been guarding the coastline. The regiment was in the thick of a fierce battle.

  Sumi’s company was on its way to provide reinforcement. Up until then, the company hadn’t engaged in a battle yet, thanks to Yoda, who had been finding every excuse to save his and his men’s lives.

  The 121st Infantry Regiment stayed here in Taungup—two hundred kilometers down the coastline from Myebon Peninsula—and guarded this area, including Ramree and the Cheduba Islands. Northwest of Taungup, Ramree Island is in the Bay of Bengal, divided by innumerable creeks through mangrove from the mainland. It is the biggest island in Burma. Cheduba Island, which flourished as a trading relay station of the East India Company in the old days, is located further southwest.

  An enemy brunt finally reached Ramree Island on January 21. Reinforced

  with a fleet including an aircraft carrier and battleships, the Twenty-Sixth Indian Division landed on Kyaukphyu, the northern port, that morning. The garrison challenging this was the Second Battalion of the 121st Infantry Regiment, supported only by six thirty-seven-millimeter antitank guns and three twenty-five PDR field guns taken from the British. Unable to resist the strength of one division, it had been cornered to the east coast until then.

  Then on January 26, an enemy force of three thousand with the support of an aircraft carrier raided Cheduba Island and built beachheads within the day. The sentry party, under the command of Second Lieutenant Motoyama, barely escaped. They made it back to Taungup on February 1 by leaping small islets, one after another.

  Having seen the loss of two strategic islands on the Bay of Bengal firsthand, the HQ of the 121st Infantry Regiment ordered Ramree Garrison to retreat to the continent on February 9.

  But it was too late. British gunboats and planes had already blocked many creeks and had destroyed all of the garrison’s emergency boats when the order was announced. Also, rescue operations intended by the regiment HQ hadn’t ever worked well. Enemies found and sunk four landing barges previously dispatched by the regiment commander. Then a liaison noncommissioned officer of the Second Battalion, located in the HQ at the time, rushed to the scene with more than a hundred domestic fishing boats. But the flotilla lost its direction in the maze of interwoven creeks and was forced to scatter. Little more than a few boats could have limped into the island. Having no trump card, the regiment HQ finally repeated the order for garrison soldiers to evacuate by swimming across Myinkhon Creek, where the strait was narrowest.

  And this time, the obstinate division HQ was throwing a new rescue party into the fire again.

  After the briefing, Sumi visited the 121st Infantry Regiment HQ shack and got military scrips for the operation from its finance unit. Then he left silently.

  No matter how few options remained, it was extremely dangerous to swim across the sea where enemies were vigilant. That’s why the division HQ had decided to dispatch a new rescue party by boat. Apparently, they wanted to prevent more losses in this desperate situation. Sumi could understand that.

  But why must he be the sacrificed pawn? This type of rescue operation had failed twice before he got the order. And yet, they assigned him to try it once more. He couldn’t understand it, however hard he might try.

  The reason Sumi became an Army officer was that it was smarter and physically easier than the alternatives. Every rank and file of the Imperial Army was crammed into a barracks like livestock and abused like slaves. On top of that, each man had to stay there between dusk and dawn. It was nearly a prison life.

  And bullying seniors and drill sergeants broke each man’s humanity and pride.

  Every drafted man knew it well.

  Sumi had already had experiences like that. Old regulars blamed him for spilling no more than two hundred cc of diesel oil on the ground, shortly after he had enrolled as a second class private. They had lit his pubic hair and had made him perform a naked dance, after they had given him repetitive slaps fierce enough to make him almost unconscious. He had turned red with fury and humiliation, but once he understood the culture, it had been clear that such treatment was a daily occurrence for soldiers. Military law banned bullying, but this was overlooked.

  The Army seemed to reinforce it. They wanted soldiers who were nothing more than cogs in the killing machine.

  On the other hand, officers could live outside the barbed wire fence. Each was free to come and go. And a batman came for him with his horse every morning. If Sumi could draw a better salary by riding a horse and saluting gallantly while adorned with a samurai sword and polished leather boots, that was the way to go.

  Needless to say, he jumped at the reserve officer candidates’ course opening—a way for well-educated conscripts to become Army officers.

  The real world was tougher than Sumi thought it would be. It hadn’t been long before he had recognized that officers from a candidate school were no match for elites from the military academy. Captain rank was the limit. An ability to command wasn’t demanded of them; rather, a reckless courage to get killed first as a good example for soldiers. And now Sumi had proof: being lightheartedly assigned the responsibility of such a dangerous operation in which there was a good chance he was going to die. It was too late to repent of his hasty decision to become an officer.

  But Sumi also knew everything depended on how he looked at the matter.

  What would wait for him in the Myebon Peninsula? His platoon had four model ninety-seven tankettes. They would be expected to provide firepower and be put forth to bear the brunt. But the maximum thickness of the tank’s armor was only sixteen millimeters, though this small vehicle looked like a fair tank. He didn’t know how to cope with formidable M4 Sherman tanks with only the easily flam-mable tankettes. It was easy for him to imagine being burned alive there.

  On the other side, the order to collect boats and go for the island lacked any specific measures. The order allowed Sumi to take it easy and shift at will. It would be a perilous infiltration; there was no doubt about that. But at least there would be some hope of return. He felt that it was better than going to Myebon.

  Once he got an order, he had no alternative but to obey it. Sumi reluctantly began planning the rescue.

  The Japanese had command of neither the air nor the sea. The chance of a bloodless withdrawal was so slim that both the garrison and the regiment HQ had to rely on a reckless wading operation. How could Sumi make his operation safer and more efficient? He didn’t have to. Returning alive and reporting without a reprimand would be acceptable. This called for careful thinking. At first he considered why the previous rescue operations had failed.

  The regiment HQ had chosen the narrowest strait between Ramree Island and the continent as a ferry point and had dispatched both landing barges and the domestic fishing boat flotilla led by the liaison noncommissioned officer there. As far as he knew, each operation had been to gather the garrison temporarily around a hamlet called Lamu, approximately forty kilometers north of Taungup.

  There was no other way to evacuate one battalion at a time. And the opponent must have known it well. As a matter of fact, the enemy had gotten ready with gunboats and rubber rafts equipped with outboard motors exclusively for patrol.

  The enemy had known the Japanese intentions before each rescue attempt. If he were to stupidly take the same way, the result would be the same.

  Sumi also thought the choice of rescue boats wasn’t right. A military landing barge surely had a good transport capacity, but it was so conspicuous that enemy spies would easily spot it. What about a domestic fishing boat? These were usually small, wooden boats used by those living in mangrove areas as everyday transportation. The Japanese called this kind of boat a “sampan.” He wondered if he coul
d collect sampan as the liaison NCO had done.

  But that won’t work because it’s slow, he told himself. It might be good for navigating through marshlands, but, once an enemy finds it, escape will be next to impossible. He also knew Japanese engineers on the continental side did not have outboard motors available for small boats.

  He returned to the coast road deep in thought. He found an officer napping under one of palms along the road. Sumi recognized him as Second Lieutenant Okada, Sumi’s colleague and First Platoon commander, who had arrived there earlier. To organize a party from Second Platoon, Sumi would have to entrust Okada with the rest of his men.

  “Hey, wake up. I need a favor,” Sumi said as he nudged Okada’s shoulder.

  Okada kept sleeping happily. Both men were platoon commanders of the same company. Sumi blew a fuse and kicked Okada hard in the buttocks.

  “Ouch! What the hell are you doing?” Okada snapped, springing to his feet.

  “Are you crazy? Why did you wake me up?” Okada had worked day and night and was also tired. Sumi realized this and apologized.

  “Forgive me. I kicked you too hard,” he said. Then he proceeded to explain the situation.

  When Sumi finished, Okada rubbed his buttocks and said, “OK, I got it. Tell your remaining sarge to see me before we move. I’ll take command of your men.

  Don’t worry. How are the ships for Ramree?”

  “I don’t know,” Sumi replied, “but I think HQ is also at a loss about what move to make. Nobody tells me anything about how to make it. I’m glad they were general directions, but I’m stuck on how to collect the ships.”

  “If I were you, I would use Burmese fishing boats,” Okada said.

  “A sarge of Second Battalion has tried it already. And I heard he failed. Maybe the boats were too slow.”

  “Maybe it was a tiny flatboat or a sampan. How about a legitimate fishing boat used for offshore fishery? Some fishermen in Taungup have some fair boats.