LITMIR.BIZ

      2

      Allied Prisoners of War

      Camp, Cabanatuan,

      Philippine Islands, 1943

      Pvt. Melo Garcia and Pfc. Arsenio Lujan slumped back on the patch of shaded dirt next to the Cogan grass, confused and debating what to type. In their cracked unwashed hands they held four blank postcards doled out by the Red Cross with the instructions that they were to type their messages in fifty short simple-to-understand words—personal matters only— no mention of the Japs, prison conditions, or the war. Type only. Both prisoners were twenty-one years old, both from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

      “I should tell ‘em about my dysentery?” Melo muttered. “How the Gook guard smashed my hand for not doing what he said in Japanese?” He glanced across the baked dirt grounds of the prison camp to check out the line forming outside the American central control office. From the hopefulness of the men in line, he guessed there was more than one typewriter inside. “I don’t understand goddamned Japanese.”

      “Only tell ‘em you’re alive,” Senio said. As for being alive, there were still close to 1,300 POWs from New Mexico among the 9,000-plus Allied, non-Filipino captives in the muggy latrine-stinking jungle prison camp. The Japs let all the Filipino natives go free and only used the white men for hard labor.

      “Don’t waste words. If they get the card, you’re alive. But you got to type it in English. No Spanish. Only typing.”

      “Me and Mamacita talk Spanish.”

      “Can’t say you’re starving, they’ll scratch it out. Nothing about the food.” For lugao, watery rice soup, they boiled one pound of carabao meat to feed 50 large men, 200 pounds for 10,000. Then after they boiled the carabao to mush, they threw in moldy rice and the men dubbed it Tojo water.

      “How many words is it to say how we followed the smell and found Ricardo Mares dead under the infirmary floor? Dysentery and cerebral malaria, like all us suckers here in Cabanatuan…”

      “Yeah, she always liked Ricardo. She’ll be real upset, but that’s prison conditions. So you can’t say that.” The mistake had been not knowing that Ricardo was dead until he was too far gone not to report. Had they known, his rations would never have been passed up. They’d have been shared, or gambled and parleyed uphill into something better.

      “So I’ll tell them Ricardo didn’t make it and we got a Red Cross package at Christmas and the Nips copped most of the Old Golds and the Chesterfields and stashed ‘em in that shed along with all our mail sacks and we’re going crazy out-of-our-minds to get our mail.”

      “No can do. You can say thanks for the vitamins in the Red Cross boxes. Your beriberi almost went away—that’s personal. Maybe you should say you lost your brother Franque at the start of the Death March?”

      “No question I should say that. And about my dad being tortured to death at Camp O’Donnell? How they pounded nails into his skull?”

      “No, say he didn’t make it—but nada mas,” Senio insisted. If the useless interpreters suspected anything sneaky, the sorry bastard would be singled out, beaten, the cards burnt.

      “Just didn’t make it? Who are they kidding anyway—these Gooks can’t even read English. They’d just as soon behead you for saying something fucking nice about the fucking rice.”

      “Your mama knows about Franque and your dad—for sure everybody already knows,” Senio muttered matter-of-factly, too weak to stand the impact of grief. “Doc Matson said he turned over all their dog tags to General King since he’s in charge of everything American.”

      “General King is a pile of squirrel turd like the rest of the idiot officers. They don’t do jack shit,” Melo said. “So I’m gonna tell her how you saved my ass on the Death March and when we get back to Santa Fe, LaBelle and me are gonna get married.”

      “Tell your Mama I saved your sorry ass more times than even I can count.” Senio held his own note cards in his hand, debating when to stand in the long sun-stroke line for the typewriters. “She owes me a load of tamales.”

      “I’ll tell her, if I ever get my turn at the typewriter.” However many typewriters there might be in the American central control shack there would never be a supply of good ribbons. Several thousand emaciated men continued to form a line outside and Melo looked up to see if they had moved forward even an inch. Hard to tell, by this time the men all looked alike—skin burnt, shaved heads, scrawny, bony, skinny, emaciated, lice-riddled stooped bodies with torn rags for clothes. Fundoshi, g-strings made from old sacks tied with string. Makeshift shoes. If Melo had a hard time telling one from the other, the Japs stopped trying. Mostly they treated the white prisoners all the same (viciously) with their eyes on a few badass standouts like Senio and Melo.

      “And I’ll tell my Mama that you and me look great in the g-strings we made and we are now real prisoners of war, not captives.”

      “Not that it makes any difference,” Senio said.

      “Like hell. It means we can get the Red Cross boxes. The Geneva Convention says we have to be paid each month and we get to send letters home.”

      “So Geneva says we have to type the letters?”

      “The Nips say that it has to be typed and just nobody tell the truth.”

      “So how can anybody tell the truth about what this war’s like, anyway?

      “Just lie. Everybody lies,” Senio said. “The Gooks probably lie too.”

      “Fucking right, it’s all lies and stealing food to stay alive.”

      “There’s bags and bags of letters from home locked up and rotting in that store room and they won’t let us at ‘em. Hell, I’d give up chow for three days if I could just get my mail.”

      “Yeah, I wonder what it’s like Stateside now. I don’t want to hear anything bad that happened in Santa Fe. I can only take so much.”

      “Everybody’s real fine there. They’re safe and sound in the piñon trees. No bombs, no Nips, no war, no nothing. Nothing ever happens there. It’s like it’s hidden.”

      “But it’s still dirt poor. Just Indians sitting on the Plaza trying to sell stuff and catching chickens for enchiladas and tamales, plenty of rice and beans though.”

      “Don’t say rice.”

      “Yeah, right. So, you think that LaBelle is still a virgin?”

      “Was she a virgin when you and me left with the National Guard?” Senio asked.

      “Technically?”

      “Yeah, technically.”

      “No, not even technically.”

      “You got your own answer then. She’ll never be a virgin again. It’s all over for her.”

      “She better

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