elaborate that, it was later written, the system looked like “a ruptured octopus.” The interrogators nodded.
They moved on to the Norden bombsight. How do you work it? You just twist two knobs, Louie said. The officers were annoyed. Louie was sent back to his cell.
Suspecting that he’d be brought back, Louie brainstormed, trying to anticipate questions. He thought about which things he could divulge and which things he couldn’t. For the latter, he came up with lies and practiced until he could utter them smoothly. Because he’d been partially truthful in the first session, he was now in a better position to lie.
Phil was pulled in for interrogation. He, too, knew about the captured B-24D, so he spoke freely about the plane’s components. The interrogators asked him to describe American war strategy. He replied that he thought they would attack the outlying captured territories, then work their way in until they defeated Japan. The interrogators responded with whoops of laughter. Phil sensed something forced. These men, he suspected, thought that Japan was going to lose.
——
Louie was sitting in his cell when a new guard appeared at the door. Louie looked up, saw a face he didn’t recognize, and felt an upswell of dread, knowing that a new guard would likely assert his authority.
“You Christian?” the guard asked.
Louie, whose parents had tried to raise him Catholic, hadn’t gone near church since one Sunday in his boyhood, when a priest had punished him for tardiness by grabbing him by the ear and dragging him out. But though Louie emerged with a sore ear, a little religion had stuck with him. He said yes. The guard smiled.
“Me Christian.”
The guard gave his name, which Louie would later recall, with some uncertainty, as Kawamura. He began babbling in English so poor that all Louie could pick out was something about Canadian missionaries and conversion. The guard slipped two pieces of hard candy into Louie’s hand, then moved down the hall and gave two pieces to Phil. A friendship was born.
Kawamura brought a pencil and paper and began making drawings to illustrate things he wished to talk about. Walking back and forth between the cells, he’d draw a picture of something—a car, a plane, an ice cream cone—and say and write its Japanese name. Louie and Phil would then write and say the English name. The prisoners understood almost nothing of what Kawamura said, but his goodwill needed no translation. Kawamura could do nothing to improve the physical conditions in which the captives lived, but his kindness was lifesaving.
When Kawamura was off guard duty, a new guard came. He launched himself at Louie, ramming a stick through the door window and into Louie’s face, as if trying to put out his eyes. The next day, Kawamura saw Louie’s bloody face and asked who had done it. Upon hearing the guard’s name, Kawamura hardened, lifting his arm and flexing his biceps at Louie. When his shift was up, he sped away with an expression of furious determination.
For two days, Louie saw nothing of Kawamura or the vicious guard. Then Kawamura returned, opened Louie’s cell door a crack, and proudly pointed out the guard who had beaten Louie. His forehead and mouth were heavily bandaged. He never guarded the cell again.
——
As Louie and Phil lay in their cells one day, they heard a commotion outside, the clamoring sounds of a mob. Then faces pressed into Louie’s door window, shouting. Rocks started flying in. More men came, one after another, screaming, spitting on Louie, hitting him with rocks, hurling sticks like javelins. Down the hall, the men were doing the same to Phil. Louie balled himself up at the far end of the cell.
On and on the procession went. There were eighty, perhaps ninety men, and each one spent some thirty seconds attacking each captive. At last, the men left. Louie sat in pools of spit and jumbled rocks and sticks, bleeding.
When Kawamura saw what had happened, he was livid. He explained that the attackers were a submarine crew stopping over on the island. When Louie was taken to interrogation, he complained about the attack. The officers replied that this was what he ought to expect.
The interrogators wanted Louie to tell them the numbers of aircraft, ships, and personnel in Hawaii. Louie told them that the last time he’d seen Hawaii, it had been May. Now it was August. He couldn’t be expected to have current information. He was sent back to his cell.
——
Some three weeks after his arrival on Kwajalein, Louie was again pulled from his cell. Outside for the first time since his arrival on the island, he saw Phil. Their eyes met. It looked like this might be the end.
They were taken to the interrogation building, but this time they were halted on the front porch, Phil on one end, Louie on the other. Two men in white medical coats joined them, along with four aides holding paperwork and stopwatches. Japanese began collecting below the porch to watch.
Louie and Phil were ordered to lie down. The doctors pulled out two long hypodermic syringes and filled each with a murky solution. Someone said it was the milk of green coconuts, though whether or not this was true remains unknown. The doctors said that what they were about to do would be good for the prisoners. If the solution worked as hoped—improving their condition, they were told—it would be given to Japanese troops.
The doctors turned the captives’ hands palm-up and swabbed their arms with alcohol. The needles slid in, the plungers depressed, and the aides clicked the stopwatches. The doctors told the captives to describe their sensations.
For Louie, within a few seconds, the porch started gyrating. The doctor pushed more solution into his vein, and the spinning worsened. He felt as if pins were being jabbed all over his body. Then the blood rushed from his head, the same sensation that he used to feel when Phil lifted
The captives were taken back to their cells. Within fifteen minutes, Louie’s entire body was covered in a rash. He lay awake all night, itching and burning. Several days later, when the symptoms subsided, he and Phil were again taken to the porch and again injected, this time with more solution. Again they rolled through vertigo and burned with rashes. After another few days, they were subjected to a third experiment, and a few days later came a fourth. In the last infusion, a full pint of the fluid was pumped into their veins.
