“Yes.”
“Well,” I said cheerily, “Mr. Busch here would like to see the jail, and I have no interest. Perhaps you could arrange a meeting for me, with Mr. Sablan, while you and Buddy and his camera crew tour the old jail.”
That seemed agreeable to everybody. We would need an extra set of wheels, but Buddy felt that would be no problem, he’d just call his car dealership pal.
Over the next three days, we interviewed Chamorros that Munez lined up for us; the idea was to talk to them informally at the Sun Inn coffee shop, and the best ones would be invited to speak on camera. We spent two days doing the pre-interviews, and another shooting footage with the better subjects, at the Sugar King Park, which provided a scenic backdrop.
Two farmers traveled together from the village of San Roque with similar stories of having seen the male and female fliers at Tanapag Harbor and later in Garapan. A retired dentist had not seen the two white people but, as his practice had been restricted to Japanese military officers and police officials, he’d heard much talk of the American fliers captured as spies; the officers had joked about the U.S.A. using women as spies.
Munez’s sister, who was in her mid-sixties, had done laundry for the hotel, the Kobayashi Ryokan, and spoke of the American woman’s kindness and gave a detailed description, even identifying Amy’s photo.
A man who had been a salesclerk at the Ishi-Shoten, the general merchandise store next to Kobayashi Ryokan, spoke of often seeing Amelia in a second-floor window.
A pleasant middle-aged woman born of a Japanese father and Chamorro mother said her name was Matilda Fausto Arriola, and told of living in the house next door to the Kobayashi Ryokan. Her English limited, she chose to speak to us in the Chamorran language (which to me sounded like a combination of Spanish, French and bird calls) and Munez translated, but I knew she spoke the truth when she talked of Amy helping her with her homework, and giving her a gold ring with a pearl, which had been lost in the war. She told of the woman being followed everywhere by the Chamorran security police.
She also spoke of the burns she noticed on the white woman’s neck—from cooking oil, she thought.
I didn’t correct her.
Only one familiar face showed up: the desk clerk from the Kobayashi Ryokan, who turned out to have been the owner. He didn’t seem to recognize me, which hurt my feelings—hadn’t I spared his life? On the other hand, maybe he did recognize me, and that’s why he didn’t bring up the priest and the Chamorro who got shot in his lobby.
These and eight other witnesses told a story that provided the mosaic tiles for the following: American fliers, a man and a woman, had been brought ashore at Tanapag Harbor; the woman had short hair and dressed like a man, the man had a head injury. They were taken to the police station and then to the jail; the woman was only in the jail a few hours, and later turned up at a hotel used by the military to house political prisoners. No one seemed to know for sure what happened to these mysterious white people, but the consensus was that they’d been executed.
Buddy was generally pleased, and got some good interviews for his documentary—a few of the Chamorros spoke English, which was helpful. But he was frustrated not coming up with anything new. I suggested perhaps that the researchers had gone to the Saipan well once too often.
That made the Texan pout.
Munez said, “You might find it worthwhile to talk to Mrs. Blas—my sister says this farm woman knows something about Amelia—but she won’t come into town. She doesn’t come to town very often. You would have to go to her.”
It wasn’t much to go on, but on the fourth day, with no other interviews lined up, we followed a winding dirt back road into farm country, where the foliage was so thick, it was as though the van were moving down a green tunnel. Then suddenly the road was cutting through cultivated land, and Munez pointed out a modest tin-roofed wood-frame farmhouse.
Mrs. Blas was a tiny, slight, dignified woman, probably around sixty but with a smooth lightly tanned complexion that would be the envy of many a younger woman. She wore a black and lime and white island print dress that was similarly youthful. Against a backdrop of swaying sugarcane, with Munez translating, she told a chilling tale.
First she recounted, as so many others had, having seen the two Americans, man and woman, at Tanapag Harbor; they were taken to the police building on the town square. But several years later she saw the woman again.
“She say she was working on the farm when a motorcycle driven by Japanese soldier go by with the white woman slump in the little seat on the side,” Munez said. “The woman is blindfolded. Another motorcycle with two more Japanese follow. Mrs. Blas say she follow the Japanese soldiers without them seeing. They take the woman to this place where a hole already been dug. They make the woman kneel in front of that hole, tear the blindfold from her face and toss it in the grave. Then they shoot her in the chest. She fall backwards into the grave.”
“Did this happen near this farm here?” a stunned Buddy asked.
Munez’s translation of her answer was that it had been another farm, closer to Garapan. She had run from the place, afraid the Japanese soldiers would see her; but later she went back and saw that the grave had been filled in.
“Mrs. Blas,” Buddy asked, his voice breaking, “is it possible you could find that place again?”
She said the grave was under the biggest breadfruit tree on the island, a tree she had been to many, many times. It seemed the Japanese took all the food the farmers grew, and her family depended on the fruit of this wild tree.
Soon we were back in the van with Mrs. Blas in the rider’s seat of honor up front, Buddy Busch at the wheel, trembling with anticipation. I didn’t know what to think. Old questions were stirring. Had the Japanese hauled Amelia out of the waters that night, only to execute her later? Or had they carted her corpse in a motorcycle sidecar, and what Mrs. Bias had seen been simply a further desecration of Amy’s body before the unmarked grave took her?
But where Mrs. Blas directed Buddy was to an expansive parking lot covered with crushed coral on which bulldozers and tractors and other heavy equipment perched like stubborn dinosaurs that didn’t know they were supposed to be extinct. All of this was behind a seven-foot chain-link security fence topped with barbed wire.
And there seemed to be no breadfruit tree within the fenced-off area.
