Ghosts of Bungo Suido by Deutermann P. T

Author:Deutermann, P. T. [Deutermann, P. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

They went down seven sets of ladders, which meant they were nine decks below the carrier’s bridge. They ended up on a mezzanine deck somewhere under the hangar bay. The main engineering spaces were right below them, and this deck contained auxiliary machinery, ventilation fan rooms, motor generator rooms, and a host of other smaller spaces arranged along a passageway on the starboard side of the ship. There Gar joined the rest of the prisoners, who numbered about fifty. They were divided into groups of five, with a Japanese marine in charge of each group.

Gar’s personal goon pointed him at a group of four. When he joined them he was handed a wooden mallet, a blunted chisel, and a basket of oakum fiber. Their job was plain to see: stuff the oakum into every bulkhead penetration in front of them, and then hammer it tight around the cable, pipe, or wire bundle coming through the hole in the vertical bulkhead. As in warships the world over, there were hundreds of penetrations through the bulkheads between adjacent spaces. None of these appeared to have the simple metal device the U.S. Navy used to ensure watertight integrity, called a stuffing tube. On this ship there was just a drilled hole, and they were stuffing it with oakum, as had been done in the seventeenth century. If the space ahead of where they were working ever flooded for any reason, the water would soon be pouring into this space. In damage control parlance, that was called progressive flooding, and it always had one, inevitable result. Oakum was a joke, a bad joke.

They stood on small stools to reach the cableway penetrations that ran along the overhead. Gar wondered why they were bothering. A stuffing tube anchors the caulking material between two metal collars that are permanently attached to the bulkhead. Water pressure on one side pressed the collar into the other side, sealing it. Hammering oakum into the holes gave the impression of sealing them, but he knew that with the first hint of real pressure all that oakum would pop right out, no matter how hard they hammered it. They were kidding themselves, especially if this compartment was below the waterline.

They were not allowed to speak to or even look at each other. Anyone caught looking around got whacked on the head by the ever-ready bamboo baton. Still, Gar could see that most of the prisoners were Allied soldiers or sailors, dressed in the tattered remnants of various uniforms. They were all considerably thinner than he was and bore the many scars of the Japanese army’s hostile indifference toward POWs. In retrospect Gar realized that the captain’s offer to let him shoot himself should not have come as a surprise. Wait until the B-29s come, he thought.

His thoughts were interrupted by sharp commands from the guards. They picked up their baskets and went single file into the next compartment, where they set to work hammering oakum into the other side of their previous efforts.

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