A Bright and Blinding Sun by Marcus Brotherton

Author:Marcus Brotherton [BROTHERTON, MARCUS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

That major in our provost marshal’s office, the officer who questioned me in front of Manny Tang—he was taken prisoner, same as us. He got real sick in Cabanatuan Camp No. 1, where I spent some time. I went to see him.

It was one of those days—no wind, hotter than hell. He was sicker than a dog. I took his hand. He was so frail I was afraid to squeeze it. He laid there a long time, not looking at me. Then he stared me straight in the eye, his voice real quiet, and said, “I’m happy you’re still alive.”

He had news. My mother had written the general and told him my real age. They were gonna send me home on a ship. This was right before Pearl Harbor, end of November 1941. I’d get a Fraudulent Enlistment Discharge when I reached the States. But my mother hadn’t sent my birth certificate with her letter. They had to wait for it to get proof of my age. It never arrived.

When they’d first got the letter, they’d talked about putting me in the guardhouse until I could get sent home. But everybody liked my bugle playing so much they decided I could stay free. Keep doing my job. That was good of them, all right. After the attacks happened, well, weren’t no way I could get sent home then, birth certificate or no. That’s why they assigned me as a runner—so they could keep an eye out for me.

I stayed with the major as long as I could. He was a good one. He died in that camp.

About a month after Dale died, a guy sidled up to me one morning, asked me if I wanted to escape with him. He was itching to run, but didn’t want to go alone. I said no. Didn’t think long about his offer. It weren’t no picnic trying to survive in the jungle. Weren’t no coconuts left. No damn bananas hanging from any trees. No wild game anymore. Hell, we’d eaten everything that moved before the surrender. Back in Abucay, we’d got so hungry we tried to survive on sugarcane juice. That’s how starving we were. Escaping by sea weren’t no plan. The whole China Sea was controlled by the Japanese. They had a standing offer of a hundred pounds of rice to any Filipino who turned in an escaped American prisoner. That’s what happened to Dale and the two guys who took off with him. They’d been turned in for a few bags of lousy rice, we heard. Later, the Japanese started this other policy. If you escaped, they’d shoot five prisoners, sometimes ten. Random guys. You don’t want that on your conscience.

So I didn’t run from trouble. Weren’t no place to go anyway. But it was tough. Real tough. At least the fight on Bataan and Corregidor had been bearable because I had Ray and Dale to share those hells with me. But there in Cabanatuan Camp No. 3, I had no one to share that with.

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