There were several photographs, which he had pasted into a small journal book, the cardstock and image of much lower quality than the corporal’s Dutch assortment. But these were pictures of women and men together, from a close-in perspective, patently engaging in sexual intercourse. I had never seen such pictures before, or even imagined they could exist. The depicted acts were crudely staged, but seemed actual enough, and the style of the photography, if this could be said, was documentary, almost clinical, as though the overexposed frames were meant for some textbook of human coitus. To my mind, there was nothing remotely titillating in them, save perhaps the shocking idea that people had willingly performed the acts while someone else had photographed them.
The corporal, unfortunately, took more than a customary delight in the pictures. He seemed to be drawn into the stark realism of them, as if he desired to inhabit them somehow. I would notice him every so often around the camp, lingering about on his own, the private journal always in his clutch. In the week or two after he had first shown them to me, I encountered him several times, each instance finding him further disheveled in appearance, wholly unwashed (and reeking most awfully, even more than the camp norm), as well as being slightly jumpy and skittish, with a scattered gaze. His face had erupted in a sudden rash of pimples. He was, as mentioned, callow and youthful, as yet, at nineteen, without much developed musculature or hair on his lip. He was the youngest boy of a fairly prominent family, whose holdings in our town included a trucking firm and an automobile dealership. He had been trained in coded field communications to take advantage of his obvious intelligence, and to avoid the likely consequences of his physical immaturity if he were an infantry regular, which would be certain injury and possible death at the punitive hands of superiors, long before an enemy confronted him.
I took pity on him because of this, though I was afraid that lurking beneath his quick mind was a mental instability, a defect of character that I was certain would lead him to a troubling circumstance. As one of the brigade medical personnel, I decided to write a memorandum to Captain Ono, the physician-in-charge, advising that Corporal Endo be evaluated and possibly even relieved of his duties and disarmed; but as with much else in wartime, it was lost, or ignored. I should have understood the corporal’s strange behavior to be an alarm — for example, he had placed among the photographs of his elders in the small shrine next to his bed several of the newly traded pictures, and actually cut out certain lurid forms and applied them in a most dishonoring fashion beside the portraits of his stolid-faced grandparents. When I lingered over this personal shrine, the corporal assumed I was admiring his artistry and even offered to refurbish mine if I so desired.
This was in the early fall of 1944, when it seemed our forces were being routed across the entire region. Ever since Admiral Yamamoto’s transport plane had been ambushed and destroyed by American fighter planes some eighteen months before, the general mood and morale, if still hopeful, had certainly not been as ebullient and brash as it was in the high, early times of the war, when the Burma Road fell, and Mandalay. And now with our being under threat of attack from British and American dive-bombers — though none seemed to come for us, as if we’d been forgotten — the behaviors of the brigade, and most notably of Corporal Endo, grew increasingly more extreme. Sometimes, if one stood outside the communications tent, one could hear him talking to himself in a singsong voice, pretending — as he readily admitted to me — to be a film star like Marlene Dietrich or Claudette Colbert in the midst of a romantic seduction. Of course the corporal didn’t speak English, but he memorized well enough certain dramatic tones and utterances such that his gibberish seemed almost real. Others had heard him do this as well, and there was soon suspicion among some of the officers that the corporal was a homosexual, and one of the captains even asked me if in my opinion he was a threat to the other men, like a contagion that should be checked. I told him I did not think so, but that I would be watchful of his activities and make a full report.
I knew, of course, that the corporal was constituted like most men. And not because of his interest in pornography, which was all too typical and rampant around the base. His unusual conduct was, I believe, a simple by-product of the deepening atmosphere of malaise and fear. I myself had developed a minor skin condition on the lower calves, and I was treating many others for similar irritations such as boils and scalp rashes and an unusual variety of fungal infections. It seemed the whole encampment was afflicted. Corporal Endo had no such physical problems, save his acne, and so I began to consider the possibility that his expressions were of a besieged mind, one perhaps innately tenuous and fragile and now — under duress — grown sickly and ornate.
Late one evening he came to my tent behind the medical quarters and asked if he could come inside and speak to me. He had washed up somewhat, and he looked much like the corporal of old. After awaiting my permission, he sat down quietly on a folding stool. I had been reading a surgery text on fractures under the dim oil lamp, and though I was weary and about to retire, it was clear the corporal was disturbed, and so I thought it best to give him some attention. There was a trenchant, focused look to his eyes, as if a notion or thought had taken a profound hold over him and he was useless before it.
But he didn’t speak right away, and so I asked him if I might help him with something.
He replied, “Please forgive me, Lieutenant. I’m rude to request a moment from you and then waste your time.” He paused for a few seconds and then went on. “You’ve been most generous to me, and I feel I’ve only returned to you the most inappropriate conduct and manners. There is no excuse. I feel ashamed of myself, so much so that I sometimes wish I were no longer living.”
“There’s no need for such a sentiment, Corporal Endo,” I said, concerned by his words. “If your shame comes from showing some of your pictures to me, you must obviously know that it was always my choice to look at them. You did not force them on me. Now, on the other hand, I would only be insulted if you suggested that I had no autonomy where your pictures were concerned, like any child. If this is so, Corporal, then you had better leave my tent immediately or ready yourself to suffer the consequences.”
“Yes of course, Lieutenant,” he answered, bowing his head in a most supplicant angle. “I’m sorry, sir, for the implication. But if you’ll excuse me, it wasn’t only the pictures I was talking about. Please forgive my insolence, but it is another thing that makes me feel somewhat desperate.”
He paused again, crossing his belly with his arms as though he were ill or suddenly cold. Then he said, “You see, sir, it’s about the new arrivals everyone has been talking about. It’s known around camp that they’re scheduled to be here soon, and I’ve received messages for the quartermaster that the supply transport and complement will likely arrive by tomorrow.”
“What about it, Corporal?”
“Well, sir, it’s not my task to do so, but I’ve looked around camp yesterday and today, and I haven’t been able to see where they’ll be housed once they’re here. All of us enlisted men are in the perimeter bivouacs, and the more permanent buildings in the central yard are of course being used. I thought as one of the medical officers, you might know where their quarters would be.”
“I don’t see where this is any of your concern, Corporal. But if you must know, they’ll probably be housed in tents, like everyone else. Where exactly will no doubt be quickly determined, but not by me. I’m not in charge of their status or medical care. That will be Captain Ono’s area, as he’s the chief medical officer. Anyway, none of this is a matter of great importance, particularly to someone like you.”