Medics of Death

By Ernest A. Herr
 

In the military, when you were wounded, when you were in pain, you called "Medic."  That's the way it was in the American Army and the way it was supposed to be in the Japanese Army.  But, what if the medic that came to your assistance injected you with a substance that caused your quick death.  If that sounds impossible or very unlikely, it's because you were never part of the Japanese army stationed on the island of New Britain in the Southwest Pacific.  But, Ogawa Tamotsu was stationed there and was a Japanese medic in a field hospital.

Here is his story:  We medics truly tried to save men's lives.  Gangrene set in unless an amputation was performed quickly, so the doctors operated on men using only partial anesthesia, because lumbar anesthesia took time.  We were true medical men, but we didn't consider the consequences, not there.  After all, how could we take the legless with us?  We left an enormous number of them behind.  There weren't any stretchers, so the more or less mobile ones were given a few days' rations and just told to take off, get away from the hospital, get lost.  The immobile ones, they were left behind.

We had only a few hand grenades and a little medicine.  Soon this was used not to cure but kill our own men.  I killed too.  We were five or six medics with one to two hundred patients to care for.  What could we do with those without arms or legs?  Carry them on our backs?  Left behind, they'd have been massacred by the natives.  It happened.  Instead, we'd give them a shot of opium and then inject a 20-cc solution of corrosive sublimate into a vein.  It took only a few seconds to die.  I could tell from their eyes they knew what we were doing.  "Please," one soldier begged.  I guess he was asking me to take him along, but what could I do?  I was sure I'd die soon, myself.  I was sure it was only a matter of time.

In the beginning, it was hard to do it, then I got used to it and didn't cry anymore.  I became a murderer.  I killed men who didn't resist, couldn't resist.  I killed men who only sought medicine, comrades I was supposed to help.  Naturally the ******* officers didn't do it themselves.  They left it to the orderlies.  We did it under orders from the company commander, then covered the bodies with coconut palm leaves and left them there.

Sometimes, when I look back, I even get a sense of fulfillment that I survived.  Sometimes, though, it's all nothingness.  I think to myself: I deserve a death sentence.  I didn't kill just one or two.  Only war allows this -- these torments I have to bear until I die.  My war will continue until that moment.  I'm alive.  What a pity I can't do anything but weep.  I know tears won't erase my sin.  It's karma.  I'm an atheist, but if there's a God . . . No! I don't believe in God.  I did it myself!

I don't hate the Americans now.  I don't bear a grudge against anyone with the exception of one person.  I cannot speak his name aloud.   The person to which Ogawa was referring was Emperor Hirohito who was not just the emperor but was considered to be God himself.  But for even Hirohito, stopping the war probably would not have been easy.   Hirohito, the God emperor died in January of 1989.
 
 

Reference:
                JAPAN AT WAR  AN ORAL HISTORY  by Haruko Taya Cook & Theodore F. Cook
                (Lost Battles)

This true story was condensed from a larger writing
and was completed September, 1998.