Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Now orders to a Japanese soldier, are not merely orders as we understand them—they are sacred revelations emanating from the most holy place in Japan and the heavens above. He understood that I was going to live in that station, even if I had to pitch out a whole Japanese division. He almost wept over the prospect, but borrowing one of my cigarettes, which I had most carelessly exposed, he got off his heels, and departed sadly to that part of the station where the Japanese officer in charge cooked his rice.

Presently the “barber” was back, now with a Japanese captain, who approached me as if I were a divinity. I let him approach close before I “saw” him, and then leaped to my feet and came to a most dramatic salute. He beamed upon me, and after we had got done bowing and scraping, the barber announced proudly that the Japanese officer had come to pay his respect to the American officer. I acknowledged his kindness with a bow that near broke my car-stiffened back.

The barber, who refrained now from sitting on his heels, and betrayed a most suspicious desire to look military, said that he would be glad to interpret for us, and said that the Japanese captain was most sad over my fate—I must have the steel of Samurai in my backbone to face so calmly an existence which would undoubtedly wreck my constitution, if it did not result in my death. I replied that I was a soldier, and was tempted to say that so far as I could observe, the Japanese captain was bearing up most wonderfully under a similar mode of life. But one must be extremely careful in joking with Japanese.

But I knew that in order to save my face when I took the first train bound south, I had better not carry my simulation of a desire for permanent residence, too far. So I became disconsolate, as they went on to tell of the discomforts awaiting me.

The Japanese captain took me to the little shed adjoining the station, where he lived. He had improvised a shelf a few inches from the dirt floor, and with a fire in a bucket, called it home. He gave me saki, in a thimble-like glass, and some raw fish. And he smiled and smiled as I said I could never endure such quarters. No doubt he has made a report, in which he cites the fact that American officers will not willingly endure privations on campaign. Thus do the nations get false ideas about one another.

I expressed a desire to get out of Ushumun as quickly as possible. The Japanese captain beamed. He informed me that a Japanese troop-train was coming down the line, and would pass through there in a couple of hours. If I desired to travel away on it, he could probably arrange with the train commander for transportation. Which he did.

So when a train with a Japanese battery of artillery arrived, I saw my friend in serious consultation with the train commander, and I was invited to the fourth-class coach on the rear, filled with officers and soldiers, and given a section, the soldiers being put out in box-cars with the horses and other men.

I do not care to analyze the motives which led the Japanese captain to hurry me out of Ushumun. It was obvious that he desired me far away. And my expressed intention of staying there, only increased his worry. If I had told him I intended leaving by the next train, no doubt I would have spent that day and the next night in discomfort in Ushumun station. But it is not in me to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

The section in the car assigned to me and my soldier-interpreter provided wooden shelves for six persons, the upper ones so arranged that they could be folded up out of the way. I begged the train commander to put four of the six non-commissioned officers who had been ousted for my benefit, back in their quarters, but he replied through his interpreter, and with profound bows, that the entire section was mine. And the hospitality accorded me in that car will never be forgotten. On that trip I came nearer to being royal than I ever expect to be again.

Knowing something of the administration of a battery of light artillery, I was most interested in seeing how horses and men were cared for by the Japanese. They attended to their duties as if work were sacred rites. They messed their men, fed and watered their horses, not merely well, but as if the fate of the Japanese Empire depended upon the utmost efficiency of every cog in that particular machine.