Life and Struggles at the Battle Field
When asked to tell me about her husband at war, Kulian said, “At the war time, my Man volunteered for the first round Takasago Giyutai and was sent to New Guinea. Only ten out 400 aborigines returned alive. From his village five went, and thank God, only one came back safe. That‟s my Man.”
Kulian was told that his men in New Guinea had a terrible time fighting hunger and diseases as well as enemies. No rifles or guns were given to the Takasogo Giyutai nor orders to fight directly, but they used their own funus indigenous sword as the weapon. They cut open paths for soldiers to proceed in the jungle. They were ordered to hide from the enemies in the deep jungle in the day time to avoid immediate conflict, and worked in the dark night secretly lest their noise should wake up or be heard by the enemies. Their main task was to carry ammunition and provisions, and to build runways for the planes, tolerating extreme hunger and fatigue only supported by Nippon Seishin Japanese Spirit, namely, “every effort for the sake of the Emperor of Japan,”
One day unfortunately they were found by the enemies and assaulted.
Her Man saw many of his fellows killed by bombs and machineguns. He thought Japanese Spirit turned out nothing before the sweeping fire of enemy‟s machineguns. As the end of the war was drawing near, supplies of ammunitions for the Japanese military were getting scarce, let alone food or medicine because the main sea lane and many islands occupied by Japan were cut off and isolated by the US fleet. It was the hardest time for not merely Takasago Giyutai but Japanese soldiers as well.
Wisdom to Survive
Thanks to being an indigenous man growing up in the mountains when young, Kulian‟s man was born to have skills of surviving in the primitive forests. It was these surviving skills that saved him in New Guinea jungles. He ate wild plants and roots which he knew intuitionally were edible. He sometimes had to eat foot-long earthworms raw when extremely starving. He saw his combat mates die of hunger, diseases like malaria and dysentery, and wounds, but he was lucky to be immune with these diseases.
Her Man was extremely skilled at trapping birds at his childhood. This skill benefited him to survive in the jungle of New Guinea. It virtually saved many Japanese soldiers from getting starved to death. Every time he caught birds by traps, he ate the intestines. He was sure that anything the birds can eat is safe for man, too. Once with the help of a Bunun combat pal, his Man captured a wild boar. The Bunun was quite expert at slaughtering it. He cut the brawn for everybody. They fed the tired and hungry troop for a couple of days.
Kulian remembers her Man say, “If the enemy‟s telephone line was cut off by us, their reconnaissance squad would inevitably come to repair it. They were always well equipped with auto-rifles and machineguns. But if they bumped into our ambush, they would give up their weapons and flee. We captured the enemy‟s weapons as war booty because we had for a quite while run out of ammunition.”
“Did you ever write any letters to your Man?” I interrupted. She said,
“Positive,” and added, “But it was only in the first year. No cubukuro envelopes were allowed. Only post cards. The letters I wrote to him, written in simple Japanese words katakana, were kept in his pocket. Only once in a while he took them out and read under the moonlight unnoticed whenever feeling
nostalgic.”
It was amazing that the mail service proved its efficiency at the wartime.
But the correspondence lasted only a short period of time. It was about this time that Japanese troop ships were frequently sunk by the US submarines. And she began to worry about him because no more letters were received.
The End of War
The war, which at the tremendous cost of suffering and losses of young soldiers‟ lives on the Pacific islands had lasted almost four years, was over. The
survivors were captured and packed in the Prisoner of War Camp.
Later the Japanese soldiers and Takasago Giyutai were completely separated in different detention camps. In the Takasago Giyutai‟s camp were about sixty of them from different tribes—Paiwan, Amis, Puyuma, Bunun and so on. Some served for the navy and the others for the army. But the army apparently had had incredibly more miserable time than the navy.
They were given American food and clothes. The food was mostly Western like our grandchildren eat today. They looked good and smelt delicious.
There were plenty of them, but he could never eat it without thinking of his poor combat Guinea. Not much else was talked about the life in the POW camp.