He’d discovered some interesting things around the Pacific, such as the fact that one enemy encountered by the troops was the sheer boredom they faced when they weren’t being shot at. This wasn’t Europe with its friendly and grateful villagers. There were no adventures in the countryside involving wine and joyrides in jeeps, or the occasional local French girl willing to help a GI feel less lonely. In the Pacific, men might be stationed on a quiet stretch of island where there was no danger of attack, but also precious little to do and nothing to look at but the sea, sky, beach, and coconut trees. Some poor bastards were driven nearly mad by the unrelenting sameness of it all.
Then there was the enemy. Germans were easy enough to understand. They were a lot like Americans except for the fact that they had fallen under the spell of a Fascist madman. You could sit down and share a cigarette or a joke with a former German soldier. But the Japanese were an altogether different enemy.
Pyle wrote, “I’ve begun to get over that creepy feeling that fighting Japs is like fighting snakes or ghosts.” Like most, he also had the feeling that the fight would get even harder the closer that the battle came to Japan itself.
“As far as I can see, our men are no more afraid of the Japs than they are of the Germans,” he wrote in one dispatch from the front. “They are afraid of them as a modern soldier is afraid of his foe, but not because they are slippery or ratlike, but simply because they have weapons and fire them like good, tough soldiers.”
He also wrote of observing Japanese prisoners, describing the unsettled feeling they gave him even while watching them talk among themselves, even laugh.
Then there was that samurai mindset. In one often-reshared account, Pyle had described how a Japanese officer and six men had been surrounded by marines on a beach. Rather than surrender, the officer had shouted orders to his men. All six had bent down and waited patiently as the officer drew his sword and beheaded each man. The marines then shot him dead.
Germans didn’t do that. All in all, the enemy in the Pacific remained full of puzzling surprises.
“The Japs are dangerous people, and they aren’t funny when they’ve got guns in their hands,” Pyle wrote. “It would be tragic for us to underestimate their power to do us damage, or their will to do it.”
In the Pacific in early 1945, nobody could argue with that.
When it came to exploring the abandoned fortifications that the Japanese had left behind, you never knew what you were going to find. Patrol Easy came across items that ranged from abandoned rifles to household goods that had been looted from the wealthier Filipino homes during the occupation, finding everything from random silver spoons to teapots.
The GIs also discovered boxes of tinned crabmeat and fish, identified by the labels that Yoshio translated for them, along with bags of rice. Scattered around were a few odd pieces from Japanese mess kits, which Yoshio explained were called
“One thing for sure, the Nips who left all this stuff behind are either dead, or they’re not planning on coming back,” Philly said.
Philly inspected one of the crabmeat tins, then held it up to show Lieutenant Steele.
“Honcho, do you think maybe the Japs poisoned these and left them behind for us?” Philly wondered.
“These are sealed cans, Philly. Do you really think the Japs went to all the trouble to can poisoned food to leave for us? No, the Japs ran out in a hurry, is all. Load up, boys, if you have a hankering for seafood.”
“How many cans do you want?” Philly asked Deke.
Deke just shook his head. If it didn’t have four legs or feathers, he didn’t consider it to be food. “If you find any canned ham, just let me know.”
“Suit yourself.” He held up another can for Yoshio’s inspection. “What does this one say?”
“
Philly tossed the can away as though it had burned him. “Who the hell eats octopus? I wish they’d left behind something good, like a samurai sword,” he said.
“Haven’t you got enough of those?”
Philly shrugged. “All right, then how about a Jap pistol?”
Deke shook his head. Many of the men were mad for souvenirs, Philly included. “Just don’t set off any damn booby traps.”
Deke was referring to the fact that gathering souvenirs could be dangerous. The Japanese seemed to be aware of the American thirst for trophies of war, and more than one GI had fallen victim to a “surprise” left behind by the enemy. Sometimes it was a cleverly hidden trip wire that triggered a mine. Other times it was simply a grenade hidden under a Japanese body, rigged to detonate when the body was moved.
Killing a single soldier with a booby trap wouldn’t change the outcome of the war. In Deke’s mind, a booby trap was an expression of hatred for an enemy, a last chance to take someone out.
