The Airmen and the Headhunters Page 17
The downed American airmen in Borneo were now clustered in two groups, the four navy men—Bob Graham, Jim Shepherd, Al Harms and Robby Robbins—and two army men, John Nelson and Franny Harrington, with the Mongans, and the remaining five army airmen—Phil Corrin, Dan Illerich, Jim Knoch, Eddy Haviland and Tom Capin—with Makahanap four or five days' walk farther southeast. When it was just a question of hosting John Nelson and Franny Harrington, the Mongans had wanted them to stay with them indefinitely. But now, with food so short and the number of fugitives in their care tripled, the Mongans were not opposed to some of the four navy men making the trip south; they also resigned themselves to losing John and Franny. Leaving the two sickest navy men (Harms and Robbins) behind, John, Franny, Jim Shepherd and Bob Graham set off to join the group with Makahanap around March 19.
More than a month earlier, Makahanap had become increasingly anxious about the safety of the five downed airmen with him. His campaign of encouraging the natives to oppose the occupiers had predictably led the Japanese to send another patrol upriver from Malinau. And though Pangeran Lagan and his men had eliminated the patrol with their usual dispatch, Makahanap had come to feel that his American charges were in too much danger if they stayed in Long Berang. Not only was Long Berang now a Japanese target, but there were far too many people in town who knew the airmen were there. The district officer wearily concluded it was time for the Yanks to move again. Where should they go next? He decided on a Christian longhouse upriver at Bang Biau that was headed by his friend Sudai Agung. He knew he could count on Sudai and his people to take good care of the airmen.
Phil and the four other crewmen, accompanied by Makahanap, Yakal, Binum and two of her friends, left Long Berang early on February 10.
After Makahanap settled the airmen in a nearby longhouse for the night, he said he was leaving for other parts of the Krayan to organize the natives into a guerrilla force similar to what he had in Mentarang District. Phil, who hoped that at least some of the rumors he had heard about U.S. forces being in Borneo were true, gave William a note to pass along to any Allied forces he might meet.
The next morning, Yakal led Phil and his party on foot in the rain. On the third day, they arrived at Bang Biau. It was Valentine's Day. Yakal hunted and killed a wild boar, which made a welcome addition to everybody's dinner at the longhouse.
Phil, Dan, Jim, Eddy and Tom settled easily into life at Bang Biau, though Phil kept hoping that Franny and John would join them soon. By now, Phil and his men felt comfortable with the Lun Dayeh way of life. They had reached the point of enjoying tree mushrooms, and Phil even confessed to liking roasted grasshopper, which he said tasted like lobster or crabmeat. There were still things that annoyed the airmen, such as the roosters that woke them before dawn, and the fleas and lice that found their way into the seams of the Yanks' clothing. But the longhouse people were almost embarrassingly generous and considerate hosts. When they realized that the Yanks had run out of cigarettes, tobacco packets started arriving in such quantities that the Yanks could have opened their own smoke shop.
The Kemah Injil church and its activities played a big role in Bang Biau. Little cards with colored illustrations of Bible stories that the airmen remembered from their Sunday school days were prominently displayed, and Sunday services were the main event of the week. The first Sunday after the Yanks' arrival, the Bang Biau worshippers offered several prayers for the airmen's benefit, including one that asked God to cure Phil's occasional bouts of diarrhea. The Lun Dayeh also asked God to forgive them for killing the Japanese. These Christians told the airmen that they worried that killing even such bad people as the Japanese might keep them from getting to heaven. The airmen were touched by the degree of the community's commitment to its church nearly three years after the last foreign missionary had been taken away.
During the week, the Yanks would joke with the villagers within the limits of their shared vocabulary, and the villagers would retaliate in kind. Often the Dayaks would point to one of the older girls or young women of the longhouse and tell one of the soldiers, "That's your girl." The one they paired off with Jim Knoch was, in Phil's view, "the ugliest woman I've ever seen." Her name was Iwak, and she was Binum's friend from Long Berang, who had carried little Victor Makahanap on her back to Punan Silau when Mama and the children fled to safety. Phil and the others did not know that, and they began calling her "Jackass," as they might have done as boys together back in California. The villagers, not understanding what the word meant, called her "Jackyass" from then on.
When the Yanks got better at understanding the Dayaks, the Dayaks asked them the question all Dayaks liked to ask strangers: How many children do you have? Phil, for the fun of it, said he had five. Eddy, getting into the spirit of it, said he had eight and Jim claimed to have ten. Dan, who had not been paying attention, answered truthfully that he had none. Minutes of silence followed. The Dayaks clearly were torn between being scandalized by Dan's inadequacy and feeling pity that he should lack the chief treasure that life could bring. The Yanks had already noticed that Dayak children were never hit or punished. They seemed to grow up on love and laughter and were given a great deal of freedom to play where they wanted and say what they thought.
In early March, Makahanap returned to Bang Biau with four Eurasian N.E.I. soldiers who had escaped from a Japanese prison camp. The Yanks were thrilled to meet them. Except for Safri, these were the first even half-Westerners they had seen since leaving the air base in Morotai in November. Furthermore, these soldiers spoke quite good English. The stories of their time in the prison camp near Kuching, Sarawak, horrified their listeners. They said that not only military prisoners but also civilians had been tortured and then killed. They described the Japanese prison guards placing lighted cigarettes in prisoners' eyes, ears and noses. Other prisoners had their arms and legs chopped off before being given the final blow. And this in a camp run by a Japanese Christian, Colonel Tsuga!
Despite their experiences at the camp, these N.E.I. soldiers were remarkably lighthearted. They liked to sing, and knew some American songs. In all, they were a welcome addition to longhouse social life, and the airmen and the Dayaks hated to see them pack up and leave two days later.
The N.E.I. soldiers were determined to make their way northwest over the mountains to Sarawak where, they had heard, the Allies had landed. Phil gave these cheerful young men a note for the Allies, describing their whereabouts.
Makahanap, who did not share the N.E.I. soldiers' confidence in the reports of an Allied landing, left Bang Biau the same day but went in a different direction. He headed due north to Long Nuat in hopes of convincing John and Franny to return with him to Bang Biau, because Phil and the others wished it. On the road north, however, he heard from Dayaks that Japanese patrols were looking for nine survivors of a U.S. bomber's crash-landing at Telehak, near Limbang Town. This was the first time the D.O. had heard about the downed navy airmen. As he traveled farther north, he learned that the Japanese had already found five of these airmen. Next, he heard that the Japanese were sending patrols down from the north and northwest to look for the remaining four.
Makahanap turned back toward Mentarang District to avoid running into the Japanese. He came across one of his best Lun Dayeh informants, who warned him that the Japanese were planning to send a patrol to Long Berang as soon as the water level on the Mentarang fell. Makahanap had long expected this, but he now focused his attention on the logistics of the problem. Bang Biau was too near the Japanese route, he realized. He decided once again that he must move his Yanks. This time, he would send them to where Mama and the children had been staying since mid-January, the animist longhouse in the hidden valley of Punan Silau, and he would get word to the Mongans that they should send their Yanks there as well.
Phil and his four crewmen arrived on March 23, Phil's birthday. Reaching Punan Silau the same day were John and Franny, looking fit. The seven Coberly crewmates had not been together since just before dropping into Borneo on November 16. Nobo
dy had word of photographer Philipps, but the rest of the crew was now reunited. Also present were Bob Graham and Jim Shepherd. With this crowd of Americans and with the special cakes and puddings prepared by Mama Makahanap, it seemed like a real birthday party, though Phil confessed to his diary that he had hoped and expected they would be out of Borneo by now.
Wonderful as Mama's cooking was, Punan Silau was not Long Berang. The animist longhouse was in the least accessible area of north central Borneo. Punan Silau was not on any map, even those that were more complete than Phil's silk rectangle. It had had almost no contact with Westerners, and food was scarce there. For the most part, the airmen had to return to living the way the longhouse people lived. The airmen, who slept on the outer veranda, kept a stick at their side to discourage the flea-ridden dogs from climbing up to chew on whatever they could find.
The Dayaks provided meat for their foreign guests as well as sugarcane, coconuts, papayas and bananas that were collected from farther down the mountainsides. Sometimes they would catch fish in big traps for their guests. They would bring back edible wild plants: fern tops, which could be boiled and added to a mound of rice, and tiny tomatolike fruits, so acidic that their juice would take the skin off one's lips. The Lun Dayeh here also ate mashed hot chili peppers as a relish. The Dayaks could take half a gourdful to spice up their rice but the Americans could not tolerate such fiery food. Since chilis were both rare and precious, the Dayaks were no doubt pleased that the Americans refused them after the first try.
Salt, though rare and valuable, was necessary to them all and caused one of the few near-fights between two of the airmen. It was triggered by Franny, who still had trouble walking because of hard-to-heal blisters on one of his feet. On top of this irritation, Franny would sometimes get so annoyed at being constantly surrounded by such young companions that he would have to get out and walk by the river until he cooled down. His entire manner was different from that of the other airmen. Not only was he a decade older, with a generally more profane and skeptical attitude, but he was also a Roman Catholic and pulled out his rosary to pray five times a day, until he lost it in the river.
Franny disliked officers more than Jim Knoch did, and one evening he told Lt. Bob Graham that he would "beat the shit out of him" if Bob ever again took so much salt with his rice. Franny saw himself as protecting one of the natives' most precious commodities. Graham was moved to respond in kind, denying he had taken too much. But after a short exchange of threats and obscenities, they both settled back down.
Such outbursts were rare, though the different approach to life among the Dayaks between Phil and his group and Tom Capin, who had come to think of himself as an honorary Lun Dayeh, had already introduced some tension among the airmen. Tom saw the others as ignorant and they saw him as a show-off. But all the Yanks by now had learned more or less how to behave in a longhouse. They knew to urinate and defecate discreetly in the woods or, if need be, at the edge of the longhouse veranda. Lacking toilet paper, they imitated what they saw the Dayak men do—go down to the river and quietly slip off their loincloths, lower their buttocks into the river, and let the water clean them.
Punan Silau, in the trough of a valley, saw the sun only four hours a day. During the few hours of daylight, when it wasn't raining, the airmen taught the Dayaks jiu-jitsu. The Lun Dayeh had a sport much like it, and both sides enjoyed throwing one another off their feet onto the soft mud of the riverbank. Still, the time passed slowly. The Dayaks were full of hopeful rumors about Allied landings, but the airmen saw nothing that convinced them that anyone was coming to liberate Borneo. Using the deck made at Polecat Gulch from the jungle-survival pamphlet, they played cards for hours.
Bob Graham, who had been checkers champion at his high school in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, got one of the Dayaks to make a checkerboard and a set of checkers, using charred wood for the black pieces and wood stained with vegetable dye for the red. There was one longhouse man who knew how to play, and Bob would challenge him. The other Dayaks lined up alongside to cheer them both on, and Bob would play in such a way as to ensure that half the games were won by his opponent. Later, Phil and Dan Illerich made drawings to show a Dayak woodworker how to make chess pieces. The woodworker followed the drawings all too literally: The pieces lay on their side rather than standing up on the board. The airmen did not have the heart to correct their kindly artist and passed many hours with their special chess set. The longhouse onlookers thought that the winner was the player who captured the most pieces, and they sometimes congratulated the loser.
In the evening, Mama would make the airmen coffee and encourage them to sing while she presided over them as if she were their loving parent. She worried especially about Eddy Haviland, nearly as young as John Nelson, because his chest still hurt, but she loved them all, especially her original four. In addition to Eddy, there were Phil, whom she thought of as so calm, gentle and thoughtful; Jim, who managed to seem carefree; and Dan, who could always find a reason to smile. It had cheered her up when Dan and Jim had learned how to say in Lun Dayeh: Mama sleg matot inan God idita—Don't be afraid, Mama, there is a God above.
Despite their hosts' efforts, the airmen were hungry most of the time. They longed for more and better-tasting food, especially fruit. When the Dayaks would bring back unripe bananas, pineapples and papayas, Mama would leave the fruit to ripen in a small storeroom she had made inside the longhouse. One evening, when everybody was sitting on the longhouse veranda after dinner, Mama noticed that Jim was not there. She went back inside to look for him and found him alone in the storeroom, eating an almost ripe banana. She did not protest or blame him, but he never did it again. When the Yanks quarreled, Mama would be visibly upset; Phil would get them to calm down again and apologize to her.
On April 1, Easter Sunday, the airmen's former host Sudai Agung, from Bang Biau, appeared at Punan Silau with a few others from his longhouse to bring the magazines that the Yanks had taken from the Presswood house, along with the rest of their clothes. Sudai also brought word that all the Japanese had left Malinau and Tarakan. If this was true, there would finally be a clear path by river for the Yanks to leave Borneo. If only it was not a rumor. Makahanap said he would ask Pangeran Lagan to check it out. Meanwhile the Yanks' impatience was palpable. It had been four and a half months since they had dropped into Borneo. As Phil wrote in his diary, "It seems as if the days are getting longer and longer. If only help will come soon."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Help from on High
The nine Yanks with Mama Makahanap suffered the frustration at not being able to do anything—not only did they lack training in jungle warfare but they had little knowledge of the terrain or even the local languages. But Makahanap was busy. Late in March, he had news of a new eight-man Japanese patrol on its way to Long Sempayang, disturbingly close to Punan Silau. With Mama, the children and the airmen all in one place, Makahanap felt that he had to find out for himself what the Japanese plans were.
He got word to Ah Tin, who came over to Punan Silau from Long Berang. The Chinese dressed himself and Makahanap in Lun Dayeh fashion and the two of them went to Long Sempayang. Upon arrival, the D.O. found the Japanese were already staying at the longhouse, so Ah Tin slipped away. Makahanap, regardless of the danger, could not fail to enjoy this moment of pure theater, as he gestured to the first Lun Dayeh he met not to call the Japanese soldiers' attention to him. When he could speak to the elders, he told them he had come to arrange to kill the men of the patrol. The villagers agreed to pretend that Makahanap was Lun Dayeh.
As Makahanap had feared, the Japanese patrol had come to the longhouse to find out what the Dayaks knew about the American airmen in the area, and if they knew where the traitor Makahanap was. Sitting with the elders in the longhouse, the patrol leader saw Makahanap off on the side and seemed curious about this strange-looking Dayak.
Walking over to look hard at Makahanap, the patrol leader asked him some questions directly in Malay. Makahanap, in his
loincloth and with another cloth twisted round the crown of his head the way Ah Tin had showed him, looked blank, as if he did not understand. The patrol leader turned to Buing Udan, a Lun Dayeh assistant pastor of the Long Sempayang Kemah Injil, who spoke Malay. Serving as interpreter between the longhouse people and the Japanese, the young pastor was spared having to answer falsely on his own behalf. Going along with Makahanap's pretense of not speaking Malay, Buing Udan translated the patrol leader's question into Lun Dayeh.
The time for translation gave Makahanap a chance to get his thoughts in order before answering. Then, in fluent Lun Dayeh, he told Buing Udan to tell their honored visitor that there were no strangers at Long Sempayang and that if the Japanese were looking for the airmen or for Makahanap they should go to the Mentarang.
The Japanese questioner nodded; the traitor Makahanap had, indeed, been reported in the Mentarang. Still, it was clear from the way the patrol leader looked at Makahanap that he found something odd about him. Suddenly, he ordered Buing Udan to ask the man why he had facial hair. Makahanap had anticipated this question and answered through the interpreter that it was because he came from upriver, where the people look somewhat different. For the moment at least, the questioner seemed satisfied and walked away.
But it was clear from the way the Japanese soldiers held on to their weapons at all times—in bed, when bathing—that they were on their guard. The patrol leader must have known that other patrols had come inland and simply disappeared, but neither he nor his superiors back in Brunei knew where to begin retaliating. The Japanese did not have the forces to police all of inland Borneo.
The next day, the patrol leader ordered his soldiers to split up. Four of the Japanese headed west and the other four went east toward Long Berang, perhaps to find the criminal Makahanap.
For the Japanese to divide their patrol in half would prove to be a mistake on their part. The attacks were brief and bloody, and none of the eight Japanese soldiers reached the far bank of the river alive. For the moment, Makahanap could feel confident that his family and the airmen in Punan Silau were safe. But for how long?