Stories

The Enemy / By Gilberto de la Rosa

He was there, standing in the middle of the hall, between two armed guards with his eyes looking at the floor. It was July 1945 in the jungle north of Luzon Island in the Philippine archipelago. General Douglas McArthur had said two years before, when he had to escape to Australia in a submarine, "I shall return." And he did it. The Japanese army on Luzon Island was forced to evacuate because of the fierce attacks by the ground troops and effective United States Air Force operations.

I was in the service, in an Aviation Mexican Fighter Squadron in the 58th Fighter Group Fifth Air Force. We lived in tents, which held about thirty persons each, near the airstrip in the jungle where our airplanes were parked ready to start the daily missions. We had to sleep with our clothes on and only our boots off, the M-1 rifle beside the light bedstead. There were too many mosquitoes and snakes and there was fauna in accordance with the tropical latitude.

I was in my tent when suddenly I noticed some people who were going to the mess hall. I followed them and I saw, for the first time, the enemy in front of me. His hair was black, his eyebrows heavy and his face enlarged. He had a beard. When he lifted his head up, we inspected his black eyes -- like two hazelnuts, characteristic of the Asian people. He was barefooted. Probably the guards had taken away his shoes to prevent escape. He wore a shirt and pants that previously had been white, but now they were gray. He had no belt around his waist. I think he felt like an animal in a zoo cage, because all of us were looking at him.

In military training we saw many films to teach us to hate the enemy. They pictured the enemy as monkeys with ridiculous hats on their heads and showing big teeth like a horse. But what a deception. This man was normal! He was more or less the same age as I (20 years) and both of us had left our countries with the same thing in mind--to win the war.

Life had appointed us to the same place, face to face. I stopped hating him, instead thinking of his family. Probably he had a mother, a father and siblings expecting some good news of the son in the service, but now he was the representative of the Rising Sun Empire, a prisoner.

When I was thinking about my relatives, the guards took the prisoner to a table, and he filled his empty stomach. After he was finished, he started to look from one side to the other. We thought, "he is trying to escape." He said something in Japanese but nobody knew the language. At last he asked for a piece of paper and wrote "WC" and they took him to the rest room. Afterwards he sat down to wait for the intelligence officers to handle the situation, and then they went away with the prisoner. For him the war was over.

But war is like this: some win and some lose.

Time has passed and after more than 50 years I have changed my mind. I believe that sometimes war has some human emotions but if anyone goes to war he must remember that instead of dying for his country, he must do all he can to ensure that the enemy dies for his.

If this man survived the conflict, perhaps he lives in his industrial country. I am sure that he has never forgotten like I, the day that he lost the war.