1942

Roosevelt started to make a pair of martinis. “What we do and how we do it are the military’s problem. I do think, however, that they could be looking so hard for a Trojan horse that they might miss something more obvious, such as submarines landing men and supplies.”

The thought pleased him, and he began to chuckle.

CHAPTER 12

Staff Sergeant Charley Finch was just about the only American who was delighted by the Japanese attack on December 7. Charley was a supply sergeant who had access to the vast warehouses that housed the army’s store of supplies.

At thirty-eight, short and overweight, Charley had been preparing for his retirement from the army by padding his nest. He had sold substantial amounts of material and army equipment to international dealers at a tenth of its worth. Even with this fragment of value, he saw thousands of dollars coming in, which he cabled to an account at the Bank of America in San Francisco. It was, he thought, foolproof.

At least it was until he got greedy and sold stuff to some local people who got stupid and then got caught, at which point he began to sweat bullets. The local crooks’ possession of military goods had brought in the FBI and, if it hadn’t been for the Japanese attack, would have seen him arrested when they traced it back. As it was, he’d been tipped off, and, while the bombs were fortuitously falling, he’d set fire to a couple of warehouses, figuring that “bomb damage” would account for any shortages.

He’d been right, and the FBI forgot about trivial matters like missing equipment and went chasing more important targets.

What he hadn’t counted on was being thrown into a POW camp. The conditions were brutal, the food was totally inadequate, and the guards were sadists who took great delight in beating prisoners to bloody pulps for the most trivial of reasons. They thought it was fun for one guard to direct a prisoner to perform one task while another would come along a few seconds later and change the order. Then the first guard would brutally beat the hapless prisoner for not carrying out the original assignment. If the prisoner tried to protest or did anything other than stand and take it, the beating got even more severe. Already, several prisoners had been beaten to death. Everyone knew it was a sadistic game the guards played, but there was nothing anyone could do about it.

So far, Charley had not been caught in it, but he figured his luck had run out when a pair of guards called him by name and dragged him out of the camp, so terrified that he could barely stand up. It’d happened to a lot of soldiers; not all of them had returned, and many of those who did come back had been beaten pretty badly.

Charley was dumped in the back of a truck and forced to lie on his face while he was driven a short ways. He knew where he was going- the kempetei headquarters.

He sat for several hours on a hard stool while he sweated and worried. Finally, two new guards grabbed him and dragged him into an office where he confronted a Japanese officer. His knees weakened and he almost fell as he recognized the officer. It was Colonel Omori, the head of the kempetei and a man whom others described as Satan himself. Beside him stood Satan’s helper, Lieutenant Goto.

“Sergeant Finch,” Omori said, “you are a crook, a liar, a thief, and a coward. Do you know what we do in Japan with people like you? We execute them, that’s what.”

Finch moaned in terror, and Omori continued. “The FBI destroyed most of its more important files before we took over. Yours they didn’t consider important. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Had we not attacked, you would have been in an American prison. Now you’re in a Japanese one.”

Finch did not respond. He was too frightened.

“Do you like prison, Sergeant Finch? Are the guards treating you kindly enough? Perhaps a couple will come and visit you tonight.”

“I’m fine, sir,” he stammered.

“Would you like to leave the camp and live in comfort?”

Charley turned wary. What was the Jap offering?

Omori continued. “Comfort means good food, clean quarters, liquor, and even sex. Wouldn’t you like to spend the rest of the war regaining your weight and fucking women?”

Now Finch was intrigued. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I want information from your camp. We know there’s a radio in there, perhaps more than one, and we know there’s a camp hierarchy that is a potential source of resistance. Also, the FBI agents in Honolulu have disappeared. We think they are disguising themselves as prisoners, and we would like very much to talk to them.”

Charley nodded. He knew this was something he could not refuse to do. The comment about the guards’ conduct meant that his denial would be his death warrant. The guards would stomp him into the ground of the camp.