The Narrow Road to the Deep North(32)

Kota did not bother with small talk but got straight to business, saying he would be leaving in the morning as soon as transport could be arranged. From a soggy leather satchel the colonel produced an oiled japara folder, out of which he took a single sheet of typewritten orders and several pages of technical drawings so damp that they wrapped around Nakamura’s fingers as he read them. The orders were no more complex than they were welcome.

The first order was technical: even though the major railway cutting was already half-completed, the Railway Command Group had altered Nakamura’s original plans. They now wanted the cutting enlarged by a third to help with gradient issues in the next sector. The new cutting would entail a further three-thousand cubic metres of rock to be cut and carried away.

As Tomokawa poured sour tea for them both, Nakamura bent down and retied the tapes of his puttee. They didn’t have enough saws or axes to clear the jungle. The prisoners cut the rock by hand with a hammer and chisel. He didn’t even have proper chisels for the prisoners to use, and when what they did have blunted, there wasn’t enough coke for their forge to resharpen them. Nakamura sat back up.

Drilling machines with compressors would help, he said.

Colonel Kota stroked his sagging cheek.

Machinery?

He let the word hang in the air, leaving Nakamura to finish it off in his own mind—with the knowledge that there was no machinery, with the shame of having begged, the sense of being mocked. Nakamura lowered his head. Kota once more spoke.

There is nothing to spare. It can’t be helped.

Nakamura knew he had been wrong to raise this matter, but was grateful that Colonel Kota seemed understanding. He read the second order. The deadline for the completion of the railway had been brought forward from December to October. Nakamura was overcome with despair. His task was now impossible.

I know you can make it possible, Colonel Kota said.

It’s no longer April, Nakamura said in what he hoped would be understood as an oblique reference to when headquarters had approved the final plans. It’s August.

Colonel Kota’s eyes remained fixed on Nakamura’s.

We will redouble our efforts, a chastened Nakamura finally said.

I cannot lie to you, Colonel Kota said. I very much doubt there will be a corresponding increase in either machinery or tools. Maybe more coolies. But even that I can’t say. We have over a quarter of a million coolies and sixty thousand prisoners working on this railway. I know the English and Australians are lazy. I know they complain they are too tired or too hungry to work. That they take one small spadeful and stop for a rest. One blow of the hammer, then they halt. That they complain about insubstantial matters such as being slapped. If a Japanese soldier neglects his work he expects to be beaten. What gives cowards the right not to be slapped? The Burmese and Chinese coolies that are sent here keep running away or dying. The Tamils, thankfully, have too far to run back to Malaya, but now they are dying everywhere from cholera, and even with the thousands more now arriving there is still not enough manpower. I don’t know. None of it can be helped.

Nakamura returned to reading the typed letter. The third order was that one hundred prisoners were to be seconded from his camp for work at a camp near Three Pagoda Pass, some one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north on the Burmese border.

I don’t have one hundred prisoners to spare, thought Nakamura. I need another thousand prisoners to complete this section in the time I have been given, not lose even more. He looked up at Colonel Kota.

The hundred men are to march there?

There is no other way in the monsoon. That can’t be helped either.

Nakamura knew many would die trying to get there. Perhaps most. But the railway demanded it, the Emperor had ordered the railway, and this was the way it had been decided that the railway would be made. And he could see that, in reality—this reality of dreams and nightmares that he had to live in every day—there was no other way for the railway to be built. Still he persisted.

Understand me, Nakamura said. My problem is practical. With no tools, and fewer men every day, how do I build the railway?

Even if most die of exhaustion you are to complete the work, Colonel Kota said, shrugging his shoulders. Even if everybody dies.

And Nakamura could see that, in this sacrifice too, there was no other way for the Emperor’s wishes to be realised. What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just material to be used to make the railway, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes. If he, a Japanese officer, allowed himself to be captured, he would be executed on his ultimate return to the home islands anyway.

Until two months ago I was in New Guinea, Colonel Kota said. Bougainville. Heaven is Java, they say, hell is Burma, but no one comes back from New Guinea.