Welcome to Chapter 11
First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my editors for all of their hard work this year, and to thank all of you, my readers, for your continued support since my return. I hope you all have a happy and healthy new year
Now, on with the story.
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The crackling sounds of Dr. Walker's voice warbled out of the speaker as Amy, and I sat and listened in silence.
"It all started at the end of the war. The Japanese had set this base up in secret, it wasn't even on US maritime maps, but they somehow found it and converted it into an airbase with an enormous garrison. If it had ever been made fully operational, it would have wreaked havoc on shipping traveling between Pearl and Australia. The whole South Pacific campaign would have had to have been postponed to take this island first, and hell, just look at it; it's a damned fortress. The gun emplacements and fortifications on the mountain alone command not only the entire island but the bays on which any landing could be made. It would have made Iwo Jima look like a sunny Sunday picnic if it needed to be taken by force.
Luckily for the allies, the aircraft for the airbase never arrived, and the attack on Pearl Harbor basically cut this Island off from the rest of the Japanese Empire. Despite it having massive gun batteries, all the allied ships had to do was sail around it. When US naval intelligence finally realized it was here, they just ignored it. Without any planes, it posed no strategic threat and held no strategic importance. At the war's end, the 1870-strong garrison received the broadcast of surrender from the emperor and gave themselves up without a fight. To be honest, they just wanted to go home.
What was noteworthy about the men of this island, however, was that all of them were in a state of remarkably good health. Island garrisons had received smaller and smaller quantities of supplies as the allies had asserted naval dominance. I don't know how many supply convoys were dispatched to this island, but there is no record of any actually making it here. Yet, whereas the men of other Japanese outposts were suffering the effects of acute starvation and malnutrition at the end of the war, this garrison seemed to be in almost perfect condition, having been able to sustain themselves off the bountiful fruit and fish they were able to gather here. More than that, they were described by witnesses as not only cooperative but friendly. A drastic difference from the hostility shown by other Japanese POWs.
An American troop transport ship, the SS Lincoln, was dispatched along with a marine guard to pick them up and ship them back to Japan. In their place, they dropped off a detachment of US army engineers tasked with dismantling the armaments on the island. That was where things started going wrong.
Six days into the voyage back to Okinawa, the entire Japanese garrison seemed to suffer from a massive, collective psychotic break. A violent madness swept through the prisoners causing them to attack the men guarding them. Twelve marines were killed before the crew of the ship managed to seal the compartments the prisoners were in. The prisoners then turned on each other. It took another three days for the ship to be brought under control. By that time, only thirty-eight men were still alive, and most of them were severely injured. Thirty-eight men out of almost two thousand. I can't even imagine the carnage.
Every single casualty had been beaten to death, either with the use of bare hands or whatever rudimentary weapons they could find. I don't know how much weight to give to witness testimony, but there does seem to be some evidence of cannibalism on the deceased. The survivors were transported ashore and into the hospital. Within another three days, all of them were dead. Post-mortems carried out on them suggest that they all suffered from either massive cardiac collapse or acute brain aneurysms, all caused by extraordinarily high blood pressure. It was like their hearts exploded in their chests.
There was no explanation. The brass just assumed that the prisoners had poisoned themselves, but that never made any sense to me. If they were seeking death, why not fight the surrender as other outposts did? Why be so friendly and cordial on the island? Of course, I know the answer now, but I didn't back then.
The seal on the SS Lincoln massacre reports hadn't even dried when the engineering detachment left on the island stopped responding to communications. Sixteen men and twelve women went completely radio silent.
A month after their deployment and a week after the loss of communications, fearing that some of the garrison had hidden on the island and attacked the US personnel, Col Williams of the US Engineering Corps personally led an investigation to the island to see what had happened to the detachment left there. His reports to Pacific fleet command were vague at best, but he described finding what he called a 'Den of debauchery.' No clothing of any kind was being worn, and the men and women were engaged in open and often frenzied sexual acts, often switching and rotating between partners. Col. Williams noted in his report that all military discipline had broken down, and that minimal work had been done to actually dismantle the Japanese guns. He blamed all of it on a failure of leadership.
The captain in charge of the island was immediately recalled to Pearl to face a court-martial, as were two of the lieutenants. Col Williams personally took over the command of the company. Three days later, the captain was shot while attacking his guards on base in Hawaii, seeming to be suffering from the same mental break as the prisoners on the Lincoln. The two Lieutenants, a man and a woman, had to be restrained on opposite sides of the same base after making repeated and often aggressive attempts to get to each other. On the one time that they were successful, they made no attempt to escape - as was originally thought - but instead continued the wild, uninhibited acts of sexual depravity that had been seen on the Island, only this time in the middle of the airstrip and in full view of the base's company.
Within another two weeks, both of those were dead too. The man died first, another heart attack. On hearing this, the woman fell into a deep and violent depression before committing suicide. She chewed a hole in her own wrists and bled to death in her cell.
Efforts to report these events to Col. Williams on the island went unanswered.
