Hunters' Island by Gordon L Rottman

Author:Gordon L Rottman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636240718
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2024-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Takeo Matsui, the shop boy from Gifu, north of Nagoya, had befriended Obata, bonded by their partiality for seafaring stories. Takeo had been given as a farewell gift a popular British book translated into Japanese, Robinson Crusoe. They also spoke of a favorite of both, Gyosen-dan—The Fishing Fleet. Takeo loaned the book to Obata, and he entertained Takeo with his own stories of fishing and fighting the sea and weather aboard his uncle’s boat. Takeo thought it was all very exciting while Obata attempted to explain that dragging nets aboard filled with hundreds of kilograms of struggling fish, sorting and gutting them, and stowing them on ice held little appeal. His hands were net-cut and freezing enough as it was. Then there was the abysmal food, long hours, little sleep, and constant cold-wet feeling. One of his worse chores was to make minor repairs on the Ford motor in a pitching boat bathed in chilling spray.

Takeo came up with the idea of fishing expeditions. The New Britain native fishermen worked for the Japanese occupiers, but there was not enough fish, much less meat, available, especially since more and more Japanese troops were arriving by ship. Their forced marches over the inland hill trails crossed numerous streams plunging down the hillsides and into the sea. The troops preferred the hill marches. While hot and strenuous, the trails were not overly steep and it was less humid than the shoreline trails and roads. They saw some reasonably good-sized fish in pools along the streams.

Buying a few hooks from native fishermen, they found cartridges for a British revolver at the old police station, which was being used by their Military Police—the mysterious Kenpeitai. They pulled the bullets out with pliers, to use as fishing weights. They promised a signalman—called an imozuru or “sweet-potato-vine” because of the vine-like wires of a switchboard—they would gift him a fish for which they bartered five meters of twine.

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