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Thread: Strange Duties Brought On By Knowing An Enemy Language (English)

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    Default 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.

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    Another story by the same author:


    The Oriental Devil, His Sin Persists
    by Minoru Kawamoto
    "You Oriental Devil !"

    This cry of bitterness and hatred dug deeply into my heart's core.

    It was only three or four hours ago. We were marching under a blazing sun along a single footpath surrounded by water filled rice fields. A young Chinese man of slight build had come walking toward us without showing any sign of fear.

    He was immaculately dressed in an all white Chinese style two piece cotton suit. In the rustic setting he cut a singularly conspicuous figure. Furthermore, his rich black mustache, so rare for a Chinese, added a shade of fearlessness to his well shaped features. He smiled as he was about to pass by. Just then I accosted him.

    "Wait, wait a moment. Were there any Chinese soldiers from where you came from?"

    "No, no Chinese soldier, not even one villager."

    "Then will you mind helping us carry some of our luggage for several hours?"

    Saying so, we transferred to his shoulders a portion of the luggage our aged baggage bearer was struggling with. The young man obediently did what he was asked. And our bunch of seven, two Chinese and five Japanese, moved forward in the direction the young man had just come from.

    The July sun glared down upon the red earth of Hunan Province as if to want to scorch it. The night before we had stayed at a large, abandoned villa belonging to a Professor Lei (Thunder) at a town named Huachiao (Flower Bridge). Before going to sleep we had doused ourselves with perfume of various scents found in Mrs. Lei's dressing room.

    Early next morning when we started out on our liaison mission, the mixture of perfume fragrance had changed into a stifling odor as it got mixed with the oily sweat from our bodies. Becoming unbearable, I decided to let my men sit down and take a short rest under the eaves of a small farming village. Without sitting down, I pulled out the 6x power binoculars awarded me at the time of graduation from Officer's Candidate School and casually looked through the lens to see what was ahead of us along the road.

    What I saw was startling. There, about 500 meters in the direction we were to continue advancing, were about 100 or so armed peasants or guerillas spread out over the countryside. They were hiding in the grass and under the trees, waiting for us to walk into their trap, we were totally outnumbered.

    "Damn it !" I cursed to myself.

    What crossed my mind then was that there was a low ridge about two kilometers behind us, and if we were able to make it to the top of the ridge we might have a fighting chance to defend ourselves. When I looked back toward my men it seemed they had reached the same conclusion from the tone of my curse, as they had already taken off 50 meters or so ahead of me ! Each was running hell-bent toward the ridge along the numerous narrow paths between the water filled rice paddies. I followed, very unlikely for a soldier of the Emperor, show my back to the enemy and having reversed the direction of advance.

    Looking back I could see the enemy coming at us in hot pursuit, spreading their flanks out widely in an encircling operation and chanting in a chorus "Sa-ni, Sa-ni", which means "Kill you, Kill you".

    It was a race between us and the enemy. Would we get to the top of the ridge first or would they close their net? Made it we did to the foot of the ridge. "Now make it over the top" I thought. Just then bullets began to whiz close above our heads and lodge into the earth of the ridge just before our eyes. From the sound of the gunfire likened to a crack of a whip, I judged the enemy was within 100 meters behind us. At such close range we would soon be finished.

    Just then the top of the ridge became alive with the sound of rifle and machine gun fire. "The games up, the enemy has beaten us to the top of the ridge !" I thought. For a few seconds we laid still. A moment later a bugle sounded off its quaint Chinese notes. The guerillas vanished as if they had melted into the surrounding scenery. It just happened that a company of our infantry was passing by at the top of the ridge and saw us below, surrounded. And they had fired at the guerillas with little time to spare. Thanks to them we narrowly escaped from the clutches of sure death.

    After about an hour had passed, one member of our party, his excitement of nearly getting killed still unabated, shouted out "Where is that guy in the white clothes? He must have led us into that trap!"

    "That's right. Ever since we met him he looked suspicious!" said another voice. Soon everyone agreed.

    I had been lying down with a recurring malaria attack but got up with the commotion around me. We searched around for the man in white. Soon we found him. He too, like us, had been shot at and barely escaped death. He had cuddled up in a corner of a barn and fallen fast asleep, exhausted. We woke him and began questioning him.

    "No, I'm no guerilla!" he denied strongly. He showed us his ID card. It had his photo on it and said he was a teacher at some high school. From his inner pocket he took out a photograph. It showed him with his wife and two small children.

    He then knelt down under our eyes. With his arms held high above his head, his hands pressed together like in a prayer, he began to rub his forehead into the ground many, many times. In this fashion he pleaded for his life. So intensely excited were we all that we had no ears to hear his earnest plea. We were bloodthirsty. And the Devil inside us kept saying "Kill him, Kill him".

    As we dragged this young man behind a hill, he realized he was going to get killed. He put up a violent struggle to free himself. It took three of our men to pin him down face upward.

    Just then a veteran superior private jumped up and sat astride the young man. He pulled up the young man's white shirt, baring his chest. His left hand fumbled for the location of the young man's heart. He then placed his middle and index fingers over and in parallel to the two rib bones covering the heart. There, between the two fingers, he placed the tip of his bayonet sideways. In a flash, with the palm of his right hand he tapped the hand of the bayonet lightly downward. It was a fast, smooth job of an experienced executioner.

    The young man let out a piercing scream with his last breath, "You Oriental Devil !". It was a cry filled with burning animosity and fury. At the same moment the body of the young man arched sharply upward. This reflex threw the three soldiers, who had been pinning him down, off of him. Immediately, bright red blood spurted out from his twisted mouth with a gurgling noise. Gradually the blood flow eased and the blood started to turn black. Then it began to form a circle of froth around the mouth, letting out a bubbling sound.

    The young man's mustache, which had been neatly and proudly attended to, was rumpled up mercilessly by globs of slimy blood.

    His body next began to twist and shake, at first in large spasms and gradually in small ones. Finally the convulsions ceased. All of this took only a few minutes.

    As officer in charge, I failed to put a stop to this violence. I could only watch stupified over this gory scene where priceless human life was being taken away at the hands of human beings who had become possessed by the Devil, myself included. As the young man's life began to ebb away I could sense the soul within me start to fade out from my body. I soon crumbled to the ground and sat there, my mind emptied and hollow.

    The young man's expression of wrath still showing on his face was indescribably ghastly. His enmity filled glare focused squarely on us and failed to let go.

    Soon the dense foliage of the killing site gradually began to cover and wrap the now still body of the young man, his pure white clothing crumpled and stained with his blood. And soon the surroundings returned to their former quiet and stillness.

    The Oriental Devils walked away from the scene of the killing without uttering a word. When they reached the village what they saw was the haughty figure of the superior private washing the blood off his bayonet in the pond as is nothing had happened. And they next saw him cut a new notch in the handle of his bayonet, the 12th one, for the young man he had dispatched just those few minutes ago.

    Why had this young man come walking toward us that day? Coming along that single path in the countryside where only the day before a fierce battle had raged and when only three weeks or so later victory would have come to free him and his countrymen from the millions of Oriental Devils? Why was he dressed up is such conspicuous pure white attire? Only he then knew.

    We now know only one thing for sure. Contrary to our suspicions, he was not a member of that band of guerillas just as he had asserted.

    This fact surfaced a few years after the war had ended. I had then been employed at General MacArthur's occupation headquarters in Tokyo when an Education Mission from China was visiting. As a member of that Mission there was a young Army captain named Chien Ming Nien (which means "Money Next Year"). We got around to talking about the War and our involvement, and by coincidence it came to light that he was the leader of the band of guerillas, who, on that unforgettable day, attempted to surround and destroy us.

    "That day there were about 100 of us non-uniformed soldiers, but there was not one dressed in white clothes nor was there anyone sent out to lure you into a trap. That man of yours in white, under bright sunlight, made for an excellent chasing target" the Captain said.

    The discipline instilled in me by my strict parents; the moral education received in grade and high school; the ethics and philosophy leared in college; the Bushido (Way Of Samurai) hammered into me in the Army; and the conscience which had been nurtured and taken root within me over the twenty years or so of my life; all of these elements making up the basic fabric of my own self were torn out of me by a single sharp cry of this young man's dying words, "You Oriental Devil !".

    More than fifty years have elapsed since that damnable day.

    But even now the young man occasionally visits my bedside dressed up in the same white clothes and torments me mercilessly with his repeated cry of "You Oriental Devil !". Suddenly I wake up to find my body covered with heavy sweat and my heart racing and out of beat.

    For the Oriental Devil there is no statute of limitation, nor any room even for an iota of mercy, let alone extenuating circumstances.

    At this rather late date I search my heart and keenly feel that War itself is a Devil and it turns humans into Devils; and that no matter how just a cause for War one may have, War in the end runs contrary to the human code of conduct.

    And, without any doubt, I shall continue to bear the ceasless sin of the Oriental Devil until my last breath.


    Minoru Kawamoto
    December 12, 1993
    At Katase Enoshima
    John Lindsey

    Oderint, dum metuant-Let them hate, so long as they fear.

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