The Airmen and the Headhunters Page 10
Having read in his superior's face that he had won this point, Makahanap went on to try to win the next. He had noted with satisfaction that the ken kanrikan had arrived without a military escort. Now he asked him when they could expect the Japanese soldiers to arrive. The ken kanrikan replied stiffly that it was not certain the heitais would come. "Only if it were deemed necessary," he added.
Makahanap tried not to gloat. The decision not to involve the soldiers could only mean that the ken kanrikan wanted to keep for himself all the credit with Japanese headquarters in Tarakan for having captured the Americans, rather than share the honor with the army. In the cheerful certainty that his advice would be ignored, Makahanap then said that it would be better if the heitais could get there soon because capturing armed Americans was a soldier's job, not a civilian's. The ken kanrikan did not deign to reply.
So far, so good, thought Makahanap, who then spoke at length about how difficult life in the jungle must be for these soft young Americans. He argued that the Yanks, if they did not fear being killed immediately, as they would be by the heitais, would probably be ready to surrender to a Japanese civilian official, such as the ken kanrikan. Then, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he added: "If they surrendered to us, that would be better than to be hunted by the soldiers. If they surrendered to us, there would still be the possibility of surviving in an internment camp, but not if they had to face the heitais."
He broke off, as if embarrassed. "I would like to explain this to the Americans but I can't speak English. But what if the ken kanrikan himself were to write a letter inviting them to give themselves up?" Makahanap knew his boss was vain about his mastery of English. Afraid to say another word, he waited for the ken kanrikan's response.
He did not have to wait long. The Japanese leaped up, called for pen and paper and quickly wrote out a letter, which he ordered the pair of Malay messengers to deliver to the airmen at Long Metuil. The letter read:
Mr. Soldier:
I am Japanese. I think you did fillful yours mission.
You permissive and pistol gun give to this man, it
consent and come to Long Berang.
R. Iwasaki.
The ken kanrikan told the messengers to use two canoes so they could bring the airmen back to Malinau, via Long Berang and Tamalang, properly supervised. Meanwhile, he would take a third canoe and go back to Tamalang. (He was never comfortable in the presence of the district officers.)
The messengers reached Long Metuil the next day and brought the administrator's letter to Pangeran Lagan, explaining what it was about. The Lun Dayeh chief told them in broken Malay that he could not deliver the letter himself. The foreigners had guns, he said. He did not dare approach them. (People who knew Pangeran Lagan would have been amazed to see him acting like a timid, incompetent government servant.) But, he added, if the messengers wished, they could give him the letter and he would try to see that it reached the Americans somehow. The messengers should wait on the front veranda.
Pangeran Lagan went inside and gave the letter to one of the longhouse people with instructions to pass it to the airmen. He could not read the letter nor write a message, and he did not want to risk being seen with the airmen right now.
When the letter reached Phil, he didn't read farther than the first sentence. He and his crewmates snatched up their belongings, rushed to the back veranda and headed into the jungle. They moved awkwardly, encumbered by the things they were carrying, including their parachutes. As they ran out, one of them dropped a metal piece of their stricken plane that he had kept as a souvenir. It clanged against the veranda boardwalk.
The messengers heard the noise from the back and thought they were being fired on. They fled from the veranda at the front of the longhouse and hid in the brush nearby. They were not soldiers, after all, merely messengers.
The escaping Americans had no idea where to go but were determined to do anything to avoid being caught by the Japanese. Phil, however, had not taken into account how badly his legs were hurting. His shin splints were acting up dreadfully. His doctor would have told him to avoid stressful activity until the pain subsided. God knew this running uphill was stressful activity, and he had just completed the exhausting trip from Long Berang. Partway up a mountainside an hour north of Long Metuil, he called out to his companions. He was in terrible pain and could go no farther. Go ahead, he told them. He would deal with the Japanese by himself.
Flight engineer Jim Knoch had been very quiet since landing in Borneo, but he still saw himself as the ranking enlisted man. With the same cool judgment he had brought to other emergencies, he estimated the chances of any of them surviving if one of them were left behind to be tortured by the Japanese. He knew from reliable stories circulating in the Pacific theater that the Japanese were not taking fallen airmen as prisoners.
Jim drew his gun from its holster and calmly turned it on his superior. He told Phil to keep walking. If Phil insisted on staying behind, he would not be left alive. Dan and Eddy, who had stood by while Jim defied officers over matters of far less importance, raised no objection to his defying one now, when all of their lives depended on it. Phil slowly stood up and resumed walking.
The messengers came back to the front veranda and waited several hours for the airmen to surrender, but finally they took their canoes and went back to Long Berang. After they left, Pangeran Lagan and a few of his men followed the airmen's trail. Although the airmen had several hours' head start, the Dayaks soon caught up with them. It was child's play for experienced Lun Dayeh to track the fugitives. For one thing, the airmen's boots left distinctive marks in the mud. Nor did Lagan worry about the Japanese or their collaborators following him and his men. No other Bornean, much less a Japanese, could track a hill man through the jungle unless the hill man wished to be followed.
Lagan and his men approached the soldiers cautiously. Having no language in common with the strangers, they could not explain that they were there to help. Then Pangeran Lagan finally thought to order his men to throw down their weapons, and the moment of tension passed. The winded airmen stood and watched with relief as the pangeran's men built them a lean-to and then moved away silently in the direction of Long Metuil. A couple of other men from the longhouse discreetly approached toward evening to bring the Yanks a little food cooked by the pangeran's wife in secret. The Dayaks showed the Americans how to use lengths of bamboo for glasses and cups.
The next day the airmen were moved for the eighth time in two weeks. Now they were taken to a better hut, which Lagan's men had built for them nearer the Long Metuil longhouse. The hut was very well hidden but there was no water nearby. Some Dayaks brought them more food, some water in earthenware pots and some firewood cut into logs. The Yanks tried to start a fire the way they had seen the Dayaks do it, by striking a section of bamboo with a broken piece of porcelain until sparks began to smolder in a handful of pulverized wood bark. The Dayaks would then place the smoldering bark within a pile of more coarsely shredded bark and blow on it gently until it flamed. But the airmen couldn't manage it, not even Jim. Eventually they went back to using their few matches that would still light in the overwhelming dampness. In any case, fires were to be used rarely, since they could be seen from a distance. The pangeran had managed to make the airmen understand that they should make fires only at night, when everyone else was indoors. The airmen readily accepted this advice. They had noticed how far away a plume of smoke was visible above the jungle brush.
The following day, Phil, who had been keeping a daily diary, announced that today was November 30, Thanksgiving Day. Their dinner consisted of boiled rice, boiled cassava root with sugar, pineapple, two K-ration "dog biscuits," a quarter bar of chocolate and, as a special treat, an American cigarette apiece. Phil wrote in his diary: "We four have a lot to be thankful for."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Polecat Gulch
Makahanap quaked inwardly as he saw the ken kanrikan turn red in the face with anger. He had been dreading
this meeting the whole way down to Tamalang with the empty-handed Malay messengers. He bowed low before his boss and mumbled a reminder that he had warned him to wait for the heitais.
The Japanese administrator contemptuously dismissed his subordinate and demanded to see Pangeran Lagan. The next day, the pangeran, still wearing his cloth bandana, arrived at Tamalang. The men with him were fully armed, although he himself left his weapons out of sight. A well-built man with an air of command that perhaps reflected his status as a prolific headhunter in earlier days, Lagan put on an expression of innocent puzzlement as if to ask the ken kanrikan what he could have expected, after having sent the Yanks a letter warning them of the Japanese presence.
The ken kanrikan was beginning to be suspicious and had his informers try to find out if there was collusion between the pagan longhouse chief and the former mission teacher, but no one would betray the pangeran. Meanwhile, in Long Berang, Makahanap took great care about what he did and said in front of others. His caution, already so ingrained in him, increased after he learned from visiting Lun Dayeh that a planeload of American airmen had been killed in a gun battle with the Japanese after crash landing near Brunei Bay the same day that Phil and the others had parachuted into Borneo. (That was the squadron's lead plane, with Major Saalfield aboard.) Some thirty Japanese had reportedly been killed in the firefight, a toll that Makahanap reasoned would make the occupiers more determined than ever to hunt down and kill any remaining enemy aviators.
Still more worrying was the news from various Dayak visitors that there were three other American airmen now scattered about the Krayan District, no doubt from the same plane as the four he was protecting. Makahanap's informants told him that two were up north at the Lun Dayeh village of Long Nuat, where they were being cared for by another Celebes-born mission aide and his wife, William and Maria Mongan. The third American airman was described by the Dayaks as a redheaded giant. The Dayaks said the giant was now staying at the Lun Dayeh longhouse of Pa' Ogong. That accounted for three of the four men whom Phil had asked his help to find. No word on the fourth as yet. Meanwhile, Phil and the others were in the pangeran's care.
But by now, Phil and the others with him were not sure they were in anybody's care. After Thanksgiving, five days went by with no sign of the pangeran or his helpers. The four airmen, too weak from lack of food and water to talk much, even if it had been safe to do so, began wondering if they were simply going to be left to die. By December 4, after another B-24 passed above their hut hidden in the thick jungle without seeing their spread-out parachutes, the airmen were out of water and almost entirely out of food.
To their great relief, they had a visit the next day from a few of Pangeran Lagan's people, who had come to help the Yanks move to yet another shelter. Weak and ill though they were, Phil and the others immediately saw that the new location was much better. Nestled within a small canyon, it was invisible from any distance. Not only did it have water, but the Yanks could also make a fire there without fear. It was really well hidden; even sunlight had difficulty trickling down into the canyon. The only way the airmen could see the sky was by looking straight up.
Aided by gesture, the Lun Dayeh let the airmen know that more than fifteen Japanese had come upriver to look for them. They pantomimed the need to stay out of sight and make no noise. After the Dayaks left, the Americans tried not to think about their helpless dependence on the natives. Although they were immensely grateful for the food and shelter they had received from the Dayaks, they had no way of judging how trustworthy they were. Would they still keep the Yanks hidden when the Japanese began to put pressure on them? After all, this wasn't their war.
Under Phil's guidance, the airmen devoted themselves to making their new home as comfortable as possible. They guessed that they might be staying there a while, so they gave it a name—it may have been Eddy who suggested it—Polecat Gulch, after a place in Al Capp's L'il Abner comic strip. Phil recalled that American airmen who made an emergency parachute jump from an aircraft were ex officio members of the Caterpillar Club, and they constituted themselves the Polecat Gulch branch, called "Club Borneo."
Meanwhile, in Long Berang, Mama was continually asking Ama if he was sure the young men were being fed properly. Makahanap felt nearly overwhelmed by the responsibilities that had fallen to him. He felt he could not take on any more fugitives for the moment, so he kept to himself the news about the three other crewmen and merely asked the Dayaks to tell those protecting the three airmen that they should encourage their guests to stay well hidden, because he was certain that the ken kanrikan from Malinau would be sending Japanese soldiers to the Mentarang and Krayan districts.
Once again, Makahanap was right. On December 5, thirteen heitais arrived in Long Berang. Leading them was a chief officer (taicho) named Takahashi, and he was accompanied by the ken kanrikans from Malinau and Bolongan prefectures and a Japanese/Malay translator named Sakata. With three such high-ranking officials heading this mission, it was clear to Makahanap that the Japanese were taking the matter seriously.
At a dinner for the senior Japanese visitors that night, Binum served at table, just the way Mama and her Dutch employer had taught her. Through the interpreter, she overheard Takahashi praise Makahanap for his good work. The chief officer then said, "The Americans have escaped temporarily but surely they will be captured. I hope that the Dayaks under your supervision will know what to do."
But Mama privately assured Binum (who had come to like the airmen when she had been in charge of feeding and caring for them at the police barrack) that Ama would never allow the Americans to be captured and brought to the Japanese. Binum's husband Yakal explained to her that the Japanese did not like walking in the jungle, particularly while trying to find enemy soldiers known to be armed. He predicted that the heitais would not hunt for the Americans, so long as they could send someone else to do it. In the morning, Binum was relieved to see that the heitais stayed in Long Berang, sending the Dayaks off in their stead.
Every day for the next six weeks, a number of the Long Berang Dayaks were paid, solemnly accepting a Japanese-occupation paper guilder from the soldiers, and moved off quickly and purposefully to the east, in the direction of Mount Basakan, where the Japanese said they thought the Americans might be hiding (and where the Dayaks had earlier left bits of parachute cord, boot prints in the mud and other signs to encourage the heitais in this belief). But as soon as it was safe to do so, the Dayaks followed the D.O.'s advice to turn off the path and go to work in their rice fields or vegetable gardens and spend the night in their garden huts.
The thought of the Japanese army paying the Dayaks for this deception could not but amuse the D.O. and his family and would have seemed comic to Pangeran Lagan as well, were it not that the presence of Japanese in the area made it dangerous for him to get food to the airmen.
None of the airmen knew what the Dayaks were doing on their behalf. Up in Pa' Ogong, however, Tom Capin was realizing that Kibung's training in the art of concealment had been accomplished just in time. By mid-December, Kibung received word that the Japanese were searching for downed American airmen and were using as their base not only the prefectural capital at Malinau but also the district seat at Long Berang, just a few days' walk downriver from the village of Pa' Ogong.
Kibung, unaware that Makahanap had been informed, assured Tom that nobody beyond the village knew where he was. Nonetheless, Kibung stressed, Tom must lie low for the time being and spend much of the day hidden in the bush. Tom did not need urging. Added to his instinct for self-preservation was his determination not to expose Kibung, his family or his village to Japanese reprisals for sheltering him.
Over the previous month, Tom's self-confidence had grown as his competence increased. "The enemy was within twenty feet of me on Christmas Day and didn't know I was there. Kibung had taught me well. I could always hide in a thicket, and my backup—my back door—was always the river. I knew if I could reach the water alive, they would never catch
me. I swam in the river all the time."
Word that there were enemy spies in the neighborhood and Japanese nearby had sent Tom and Kibung into the bush that day, interrupting the best meal Tom could remember having eaten since leaving the Morotai air base. He hoped his crewmates were also enjoying Christmas somewhere and he thought especially of John Nelson, the youngest of the crew and the mascot, who had jumped out of the camera hatch before he had.
For hours Tom and Kibung squatted in the damp, itchy underbrush. But now Kibung decided that he and Tom could leave their hiding place, after seeing what he took to be an enemy patrol go past hours earlier. Since their conversion by Kemah Injil missionaries more than ten years earlier, the people of Pa' Ogong regarded the Christmas feast as a big event, not to be interfered with by a contemptible enemy. "Let's go back home," the Iban said, standing up. "I kill if they come."
Farther north, in Long Nuat, word came to William Mongan from visiting Dayaks that the Japanese had sent patrols through the Krayan and Mentarang districts looking for fugitive American aviators. Mongan and his church people rushed John and Franny to one of the small empty huts in the rice fields. They gave the Yanks mats to sleep on, as well as rice and other essentials.
Franny and John were later told by the Mongans that the Japanese or their Malay agents had appeared in the area, but that the Dayaks (presumably without telling an actual untruth) had convinced them that no Americans were there. John and Franny had stopped wearing boots when they were in or near the village and had left no obvious trail for outsiders to follow.