Strange Duties Brought On By Knowing An Enemy Language (English)
Strange Duties Brought On By Knowing An Enemy Language (English)
by Minoru Kawamoto
"...So, for that reason, Sub-Lieutenant Kawamoto, your most important duty of having our balls saved rests squarely on your shoulders !"
In front of me a soldier of fine presence was sitting in a couch leisurely in good contrast to me standing at stiff attention. The rank insignia on his collars glittered with two stars enshrined on wholly gilt plate, a rank I had never set my eyes on before or even hoped to. He was a Lieutenant General; the 34th Division Commander BAN Tateo ! Coming from his mouth, the above remarks could not have been a joke. I believed it.
It was only the evening before when I had just beached my Chinese junk near regimental headquarters on the northern bank of the Yangzi River after having hauled provisions all day long when the word came. "The Regimental Commander wants to see you at once." My intuition came instantly into play. "I'm going to be court-martialed, finally !". And everything went black.
Ever since I returned to my regiment fresh out of Officer's Candidate School almost everything I thought I did right turned into a blunder. And every time the regimental commander would know about it and would lash out at me "You're going to be court-martialed the next time we have an extended stay..Better be prepared for it !". "Heck, let the chips fall where they may" I thought in resignation as I hurried to see the Regimental Commander, Colonel MORI Sanmaru.
"Division Headquarters has named you to be transferred to their staff. Go, first thing tommorrow morning !". The Regimental Commander's purpose of wanting to see me turned out to be a big surprise. I heaved a sign of relief as I was saved from being court-martialed, at least for the time being. That night however, I could not sleep wondering why a lowest rank officer and a serial blunderer like me had to be called up to Division Headquarters to join the elite staff.
I showed up next morning at Division Headquarters, and, as soon as I had finished reporting to duty, the Division Commander directly assigned me this strange duty mentioned at the outset.
Before the Division Commander made his remarks, the Chief Of Staff, Colonel Sakota, explained to me the dire situation confronting the division. "The US forces have recently landed in Shanghai, and we have reports that they are castrating every Japanese officer they can get hold of. Sooner or later they are bound to show up here with the same intentions. In the event they do come we want you to persuade them, at all costs, to have our balls saved from being extracted. We know you are a college graduate having spent some time in the US, and believe you are good in English. We thought you were the most qualified officer in our Division for this task and had you transferred to Division Headquarters."
This was indeed a time of eminent danger for the poor testicles and their officer owners. Out of the pair, not even one should be allowed to fall into enemy hands ! My worry over the fate of the testicles now far exceeded that of my being court-martialed. And for the first time I felt the weight of my duty bear down heavily on my frail shoulders.
Another staff officer, who was of short stature, Major Fuchigami, shot a question at me quite unexpectedly. "You, Kawamoto, how do you say in English 'kintama'?". This crude question was thrown at me so abruptly that I hesitated for a moment to answer. Since English was tabooed in Japan as it was an enemy language, I had not heard or used it for years. It took several seconds to switch over from Japanese to English, especially as this word was a rare one in my vocabulary. I finally managed to spurt out the answer. "Yes, its called 'balls' in plain spoken English, 'testicles' being the academic term." "Extracting the kintama?" "The plain expression is 'cut your balls off' and 'castrate' the medical term." "Is that so? Good !" The Division Commander and the Chief Of Staff looked at each other and smiled. It was their signal of relief that I had passed the 'balls' test.
Major Fuchigami then told me that several top chefs selected from within the Division had been placed under my "command", and if I needed anything I was to let him know. The motive of this maneuver was clear and evident. I was to wine and dine the US soldiers and somehow inveigle them into looking the other way and forget about seizing our precious genitals. If I failed in my duty, I would be one of the first officers to become a pathetic, shameful invalid. No woman would dare marry me. Never had I so regretted having passed the exams for Officer's Candidate School and becoming an officer than as at this time.
The orderly attached to me was a recruit in his forties. In private life he was a maker of "anko" or Japanese bean jam used in making all sorts of cakes. (The Division even knew I had a sweet tooth.) The other six were all top knotch professional chefs in civilian life, specializing in Western, Chinese and Japanese cooking. Thus, started my first day of Operation Save Our Balls, a day in early autumn in China about a month after Japan's defeat.
The Division Headquarters was located at Shakaten (Xiejiadian) village near Xiaguan on the northern banks of the Yangzi River. It occupied a corner of a large chemical fertilizer plant, Eirei Konsu (Yonli Gongsi), an affiliate of a Japanese chemical company. A part of the compound formed a neat cultural village. Living there were about 50 Japanese engineers and their families and a smaller number of Chinese workers. There was even a Chinese doctor whose daughter named Chen Bao (rare treasure) was quite charming.
The best brick building of two stories was set aside for my unit. The chefs took turns cooking up their specialties using whatever food material was available. As head of the unit it was my duty to taste the food and give an opinion as a gourmet should. Soon high ranking officers would come by daily to feast. And shortly I had them eating out of my hands so to speak.
However, wait we did for the main guests to arrive but somehow they failed to show. One day, I asked the Division Commander who came to "taste" the cuisine, "Why are the Americans castrating only the officers and not the men?". "Why? Because we, officers, are the elite of the Japanese people, and it was they who started this war. So the Americans want no more Japanese elites to be procreated to start another war." It was a penetrating answer, and I still remember being struck by the farsightedness and the well thought out designs of the Americans as presented by the Division Commander.
In the late 50's I visited the US on business. There I met a former US naval officer whose man of war had put into Shanghai right after the end of the war. I told him of my Operation and he burst out laughing. He said, "At that time Shanghai was rampant with such a rumor. The Chinese side had even offered to teach the Americans their castrating know how developed over the centuries in producing eunuchs to oversee the Emperor's harem. Needless to say, the Japanese forces in Shanghai were worried no end. Fortunately, however, for the Japanese officers, there was not a single US soldier who took back home a single or a pair as a souvenir."
Autumn arrived on the banks of the Yangzi at a brisk pace and brought with it some chilly weather. Yet not a single US soldier appeared on the scene to carry out what we most feared. One day as we grew tired waiting I happened to step into a room which turned out to be a library. The shelves were lined neatly with books with Chinese titles, but I soon singled out a thick volume with an English title, "The Complete Marriage", on it. Its contents were entirely in English. It was not the title of the book but my thirst to read English which prompted me to walk out of the room with the book sneaked under my arm.
The author of this book was a Dutch medical doctor by the name of Van De Velde. He had put forth in this volume a serious treatise, a medical explanation in elaborate detail of the mental and physical changes occurring to each partner during marital intercourse. Since I then lacked carnal knowledge everything was new and enthralling. Especially, in the chapter on positions he gave about 10 basic ones, with various side techniques; furthermore, the effects to be expected from each position were all explained in meticulous detail. It was what they would call today and "operating manual". My orderly, a married man, zealously explained passages which I could not understand. In no time everybody around me caught on to what was going on, and they raised objections that it was too good a book for me to monopolize. I was soon begged into translating the book.
No one could wait for my translation to finish. Page by page they took my translation and passed it around for all to read. This translation became very popular within Headquarters, and it soon leaked out to the regiments. Not satisfied by the Doctor's sex description in words, a graduate art student was transferred from some regiment to my unit with orders to undertake a graphic version. And many soldiers vied with each other to become models, claiming they knew all the ins and outs of the arts of sex.
Thus this chapter, not only contained the Doctor's explanation in words but was accompanied with rich artistic illustrations, topped with speech and noise interspersed in writing. All of these elements added a shade of hallucinating color to this past-time reading. The sex portrayal, sometimes on the Japanese "tatami" floor, at times in a Western style bed, all were close to the real thing, or better, I was told.
The pirated pornographic version of Dr Van De Velde's monumental work was much in demand; it had become a "best seller" as they call it today, but in the Army royalty was free. Just on the day the translation of this chapter on positions was completed I was ordered to Shanghai as a member of the Division's advance party to arrange for repatriation. So this popular, illustrated works of Dr Van De Velde's otherwise serious treatise had to cease publication at its climax. In other words, the curtains came down at the height of orgasm.
Many years after returning to Japan, I came across this very book translated into Japanese being sold with much fanfare on Tokyo's street of Ginza. With nostalgia I picked up the book and went straight to the chapter I had translated. Of course there were no illustrations, and the translation lacked finesse. It was not the kind of book to pay any monies for, as mine had been much better.
In this way, my noble duty of having to preserve the elite seeds of the Japanese race went undischarged. Instead, my social status had been degraded to that of a porno producer, all due to the fact that not a single American soldier appeared on the scene. Fortunately, my capability went untested, and each and every officer was able to set foot on native soil with their treasures dangling intact. As a consequence, swarms of new elites were brought forth into this world, and now a great many of them have been dispatched throughout the world, this time without weapons but with abacuses instead, as soldiers of economic aggression.
If what the general had told me were true and the Americans did show up with scalpels in hand what would I have done? Just to think of this scenario sends shudders through me even today. By the Grace Of Heaven, however, I was given the vocation of producing pornography, albeit based on Dr Van De Velde's monumental works. And if my laborious work did play a part in "arousing" morale within the army, then I consider that to be my sole contribuation to the Japanese Army, which had to put up with all my bunglings throughout the years of my active service, or rather, disservice.
Minoru Kawamoto
November 1, 1992
The above is and English translation of an article published in "Daisan Kutai Dayori" (3rd Platoon News), March 1993
John Lindsey
Oderint, dum metuant-Let them hate, so long as they fear.