Letters Across the Sea by Genevieve Graham (best short novels of all time txt) 📗

“That we’d been forgotten.”

Heat rushed into my cheeks. “Not by everyone.”

“Good to know.” He took a sip of his coffee. “So. Researching Japanese POW camps. Sounds like some fun reading.”

His tone was bitter, sarcastic, so unlike the Max I knew. Was it from his experience? Or was it because of Ian and me?

“I wouldn’t call it fun, Max,” I said, asserting myself. “But I would call it important. I know a fair amount, but the outside world was mostly kept in the dark. That fed the rumours, but there was no proof. So I’m hoping you can talk about it. Help people—like me—understand what went on over there.”

He looked down for a moment, then back up at me. All I saw was fatigue in those brown eyes. Fatigue and defeat.

“Okay, I’ll do my best. What do you already know?”

“I spoke with Sergeant Cox at the reception just before I saw you. He filled in a lot of details for me.”

“Cox was my sergeant. He and I were together at North Point Camp, then Sham Shui Po.”

“Yeah, I know. He told me that he was Richie’s sergeant.” I watched him, wondering if he’d let me hook him. I wanted so badly to know about my brother.

But Max skipped right over that, and I set my hopes aside for now. “I was glad to see him at the reception,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him in years.”

“You didn’t go with him to the NKK shipbuilding factory in Tokyo, then?”

He shook his head. “No. I got put on a hell ship along with a few hundred others and landed at Niigata Camp.”

My heart stilled at the name. Niigata, on the northwest coast of Japan, directly north of Tokyo. He’d been sent to the mines.

“Can you tell me about that camp?”

He took a deep breath through his nose. “It was cold. In Hong Kong, we were constantly sticky with sweat. But Niigata was cold.” His fingers curled around his coffee cup. “The minute we got off the boat, they bound our wrists with barbed wire.”

My gut clenched at the thought, and I looked at his hands. They’d been such strong, capable hands. Hands built for baseball and medicine. Hands that, once upon a time, had held mine. Now I saw vague lines cut around the wrists, scars put there by hate. I thought of the German prisoners at Bowmanville, then their Canadian counterparts at Stalag VIIIB, shackled because of a random order. I remembered how the men had fought so heatedly at Bowmanville, determined to maintain their freedom. Max had never had the opportunity to fight back.

“We were often bound,” he continued, his voice flat. “Sometimes with barbed wire, sometimes chains. We worked in the mines twelve hours a day, so we weren’t bound then, of course. We couldn’t have worked for them if we had been. Every day for over two years we were up around five in the morning for tenko, the daily roll call, where we all lined up and called out our number, one at a time. In Japanese.”

“But how did you know any Japanese?” I asked.

Max gave a little huff of derision. “We didn’t. But we learned real quick. If you stumbled on your number, you were dragged up and beaten in front of everyone. A couple of the guards looked the other way when they could, but that was rare. I got the impression most of them lived in terror of the senior officers. If they were caught being lenient, their punishment might be even worse than ours.” He took another sip of coffee. “I can tell you one thing for certain. The Japanese were great at doling out punishments, warranted or not. They hit us with anything they had on hand, and they hit us without mercy. A lot of my friends died from those beatings.”

I studied him, discomfited by the lack of emotion in his voice. Then I remembered Sergeant Cox trying to explain to me about how he couldn’t feel emotions anymore. Could Max?

Max patted his pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Ian leaned forward. “I imagine this must be difficult to talk about, but what you’re doing is giving a voice to those who won’t be coming home. They deserve to be remembered.”

Max inhaled, let the smoke roll over his lips. “I know.”

Sergeant Cox had also talked about the lack of medical treatment at the camps. That aspect would touch Max, I was certain.

“It must have been hard for you, being a doctor, to watch all the suffering.”

Finally, I saw his jaw flex. “I’ve never felt so helpless,” he said, his voice a low grumble. He drew on his cigarette again, and his voice returned to normal. “So many men died of disease. Dysentery, diphtheria, cholera, beriberi, pneumonia, gangrene, tropical ulcers, pellagra, skin infections. Without nutrients, some of the men went blind. Some lost all sensation to parts of their bodies. A lot of them screamed all night because of ‘electric feet.’ ”

I raised an eyebrow.

“It’s an illness that comes from starvation,” he explained. “Relentless, agonizing pain in the feet, like needles being jabbed into them day and night. And the Japanese had an interesting way of taking care of the sick: they got even smaller rations. One less prisoner to feed. As a result, there were so many dead we had to load bodies into a wheelbarrow to take them to the crematorium.”

I hesitated, trying not to imagine what he’d just described. “What about you?” I asked, needing to know. “Did you get sick?”

“Everybody got sick.”

“What happened?”

He tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and stared blankly at the ashes. “The first thing to hit the camp was dysentery,” he said. “That spreads like wildfire. It drained the men in every way possible. We already weren’t eating, but then our guts got rid of whatever we did have. It was disgusting. And often lethal.” His nostrils flared in anger. “So many of these diseases were treatable,