Harp of Burma. Michio Takeyama

our caps, he smiled, raised his hand to the harp, and strummed a loud chord.

      As we watched him go, we thought that Mizushima was the kind of man who could carry it off, that his mission would probably be a great success.

CHAPTER TWO

      UNDER the orders of the British army, our company went from the mountains into the plains, then by boat down the Sittang River, and at last by train and truck to Mudon. There we were put into a P.O.W. camp.

      Our fears for our own lives soon disappeared. We learned that our country had been defeated, almost destroyed, but that it was not entirely ruined and that we prisoners of war were to be repatriated some day.

      In Mudon we began our new life of waiting for the day to go home.

      Our quarters consisted of a simple nipah house—a hut of bamboo poles with the floor high off the ground, topped by a thatched roof. It was too well ventilated to get very damp. We had to sleep without bedding, but that was no real hardship in such a hot climate. The house was enclosed by a bamboo stockade, which not only kept us in but kept others out. An Indian sentry stood at the entrance, and whenever he saw a vendor or anyone trying to steal in, he would fire blank shots to scare him away.

      There was a long row of stockades like this, and each of them held a group of prisoners. However, we were forbidden all communication with the other prisoners, so we knew nothing of what was going on outside. Regulations of this kind were strictly enforced, but otherwise the treatment was lenient.

      Now and then we would be ordered out on some construction or lumbering job, but on the whole we lived an uneventful, monotonous life, with nothing to do.

      We hadn’t spent peaceful days like this for a long time—for years, in fact. We had been constantly agitated, harassed, pursued; always tense and anxious about what might happen next. During the past year especially, we lived in a world of blinding flashes and deafening explosions. Suddenly all that stopped—now there were no bombings, no commands, no jumping to our feet in the middle of the night. From one day to the next we stayed quietly in our little nipah house, gazing out at a palm grove. At first it seemed almost unbearably strange to us. As we sat there vacantly, we felt nervous and fearful in our hearts. Eventually, though, this vague uneasiness left us and we became used to our quiet life.

      But just as we were feeling more relaxed, a different sort of uneasiness began to trouble us. This time we worried because Mizushima had been gone so long.

      At the beginning we were confident that Mizushima would join us here in a few days. We expected the gate to swing open any moment, and Mizushima to walk in as vigorous and high spirited as ever. We often found ourselves looking toward the gate. Sometimes we even thought we heard his footsteps.

      But no matter how long we waited, he never came.