HUMAN BULLETS
Ch. I.
MOBILIZATION
IN the second month of the thirty-seventh year of Meiji,[3] the diplomatic relations between Japan and Russia were severed, and the two nations began hostilities. At the outset our navy dealt a stunning blow to the Russian war vessels at Chemulpo and off Port Arthur. His August Majesty issued a proclamation of war. Mobilization orders were issued to different divisions of the army. At this moment we, the soldiers of Japan, all felt our bones crackle and our blood boil up, ready to give vent to a long-stored energy. Mobilization! How sweetly the word gladdened our hearts, how impatiently we waited to be ordered to the front! What division was mobilized to-day? What one will have its turn to-morrow? How long shall we have to wait? May the order come at once! May we find ourselves in the field without delay! Not that we wished to distinguish ourselves and win honors in the early battles, but that we hated the idea of arriving at the scene after other divisions had borne all the burden of the first struggle. But what could we do without Imperial orders? We were soldiers always ready to “jump into water and fire at the Great Sire’s word of command.”[4] We had to wait for the word “Advance!” How eagerly we watched for that single word, for that order of mobilization, as drought-suffering farmers watch for a rain-cloud in the sky! We offered “mobilization prayers” as they offer “rain prayers.” Wherever we went, whomsoever we met, we talked of nothing but mobilization. At last about the middle of April, the month of cherry-blossoms,[5] emblematic of the spirit of Japan’s warriors, our division received this longed-for order. Ordered to the front! Our garrison was granted the golden opportunity of untrammeled activity. I was at that time the standard-bearer of the regiment. I said to our commander on hearing this glad news: “Hearty congratulations, Colonel; we have just received the order.”
Upon which Colonel Aoki smiled a smile indescribably happy as if he welcomed the order and exclaimed, “It has come at last!”
That was the happiest day we had ever experienced, and I could not help going around, half in frenzy, to the officers of all the companies to carry the news to them. A mysterious kind of spiritual electricity seemed to permeate the whole garrison, composed of the flower of the “Land of the Gods.” Every one, both officers and privates, seemed ready to fight the whole of Russia single-handed. Our souls were already on the great stage of Liaotung, while our bodies still remained in our own country.
The men of the first and second Reserve were none the less anxious and quick to gather round their standard. Some of them were so poor that their wives and children seemed likely to starve without them, others came from the sick beds of old, dying parents;—all must have had cares and anxieties to detain them. But now the emergency had arisen, and the time had come for them to “offer themselves courageously for the State.”[6] What a privilege, they all thought, for a man to be permitted to give his life for the nation’s cause! When we saw them swarm together day after day, our hearts bounded with redoubled joy and strength.
Here is a sad story of this time. Nakamura, a private of the first Reserve, had an invalid wife and a baby of three. They were extremely poor, and the family would starve without the husband. Of course, however, the family trouble had no place in their minds before a national crisis. On the eve of her husband’s departure, the poor emaciated woman gathered all her scanty strength, went to the town near by and bought two go[7] of rice and one sen[8] worth of fuel. This handful of grain and bundle of firewood, are they really as insignificant as they seem to be? Nay, the two go of rice and the sen worth of wood were for the loving wife’s farewell banquet[9] in honor of her husband’s great opportunity. And yet at the time of separation, the wife was sick and the child starving, and the husband going to give his life to his country! In the morning, before daybreak, Nakamura bade good-by to wife and baby, and without a farewell from his neighbors hastened bravely to his post. Such was only one out of hundreds of thousands of similar heartrending instances. The kind and sympathetic people left at home at once began to relieve these unfortunate families, so that the men at the front could devote their whole attention and energy to their duties as soldiers.