Samurai & Snipers полностью

He felt sorry for them all, mostly for the kind and friendly Filipino people, but also a little for the dead Japanese. There had been at least a few Japanese soldiers during the occupation who had been easygoing enough, even kind, at least toward harmless kids. You could never paint every Japanese soldier with the same brush. Roddy was still of a tender age, and like the innocent boy that he was, he had listened in church enough to believe that there was good in all people, at least deep down. He didn’t yet know that this wasn’t true. In particular, the Japanese occupiers overall had shown that they were capable of cruelty in ways that were hard to understand.

Even though his father had been imprisoned, his family had remained relatively insulated from the worst that the Japanese had to offer. From time to time, an officer and a couple of soldiers appeared at their door, politely asking the names of all who lived there, including their two servants. Roddy hadn’t felt much fear or anger toward the Japanese, but really just boyish curiosity, being more interested in the rifles that the soldiers carried and the pistol on the officer’s hip. Any boy found weapons fascinating. The Japanese had been polite rather than threatening. The Japanese soldiers had never given them any trouble after his mother provided that information, made courteous apologies, and quickly left.

But times hadn’t always been easy, and they had steadily gotten worse. They were sometimes allowed to visit their father at the university compound, and Roddy recalled how his father had asked his mother what had become of her diamond stud earrings.

“My earrings?” she’d said vaguely, touching her bare ears as if in surprise, when they all knew very well that she never went anywhere without them.

“The ones I bought for you in Brisbane before the war,” he’d said, looking at her with sad eyes, as if he had already guessed the truth.

Tearfully, his mother had admitted that she had traded them for a two-pound can of dried milk. Roddy hadn’t had any idea that the food he and his brothers were eating had been so dearly bought. Years later, Roddy would wonder what else his mother had given up to provide for and shelter her family. One by one, their family heirlooms and the pretty objects his mother had collected had quietly disappeared.

More than once, his mother had pointed out that they were lucky because they still had at least some money. Anyone with money in American banks — the Philippines was a US territory, after all — had no access to their saving because the banks had been closed, their assets possibly gone forever. However, their family connections had meant that his father had ended up keeping their money in a Filipino bank managed by one of his mother’s distant relatives. There just hadn’t been much of it, considering that his father had been unable to conduct any business after the Japanese arrived.

Despite the fact that his mother did what she could to insulate her children from the realities of war, the threat of the Japanese was always there, and sometimes Roddy had tempted fate. There was nothing playful about the Japanese, and their patience with gaijin children went only so far.

He recalled seeing a truckload of American and Australian POWs stopping in his neighborhood on its way through the city. This in itself was unusual, but it was a hint that Allied forces must be slowly closing in on Manila, if there were now new prisoners being taken or old ones being moved out of the way of advancing forces.

One of Roddy’s pretty young neighbors had passed by, a Filipino girl in her late teens or early twenties, and one of the Australians had tipped his hat to her in a gallant gesture. The Japanese had responded by using a rifle butt to knock him unconscious. Roddy and his friends did their best not to react, because the Japanese guards were watching them and would have beaten them if they showed any sympathy for the poor prisoner.

Another time, he and his friends had been playing spy by lingering outside the local Japanese headquarters and keeping track of how many vehicles came and went, writing down the numbers in a little notebook. The information didn’t have any point or use. The boys were just playing at being spies, but if they’d been caught gathering that information, the Japanese surely would have killed them without mercy.

One of the stranger things that the Japanese had done was to seize every toy pistol that they could find. Playing cowboys and Indians was a favorite game, and a toy six-shooter was a boy’s prized possession. It turned out that the toy guns had also become popular with Filipino guerrillas and even thugs, who used them against unsuspecting Japanese soldiers who couldn’t tell the difference between a toy gun and the real thing. Owning a toy gun became a very serious crime.