10 March 2008

The Cracker Caper (Conclusion)


Getting information out of prisoners is a thorny ethical proposition.

Maybe I should rephrase that. Getting accurate information is hard, and one should avoid situational ethics as a matter of principle.

The Police are always at the edge of it, much more so than the military or the Spooks. They have always had their ways here in America, and the sweat-session and occasional beating is the very stuff of the Noir Detective novel. The problem with that sort of approach is that often the information that is produced is bogus, and manufactured on the spot to get the pain to stop.

That may cause a confession and close a case, but it does not necessarily gain tactical advantage in a military or intelligence situation.

The American POWs who were so badly tortured in the prisons of North Vietnam spun incredible tales to try to satisfy their captors. There were interrogation notes that featured diagrams of the live-stick pens, swimming pools and bowling alleys on the aircraft carriers that operated off the coast.

When the truth became known to the Northerners, that their brutal sessions had only produced fantasy, the consequences for the prisoners were dire.

That is one of the surreal aspects about the current controversy over the water board procedure tactic, and whether the CIA should be permitted to utilize it in a small number of cases. It was introduced into the American training syllabus for survival, evasion and resistance school just to give a taste of how bad things could be while in the hands of the enemy.

There was a time when the whole discussion would never have occurred.

When WW II ended, the US Navy ships at the former Imperial Navy Base at Yokosuka off-loaded all the ammunition and stores they could in order to make space for troops to ride the ships back to America in the great Magic Carpet ride of demobilization.

There was a lot of stuff to get rid of. Plans for the invasion of the Home Islands, code-named “Operation Olympic,” had called for massive amounts of materiel to be on hand in the Far East for a protracted and bloody struggle.

Every Purple Heart Medal for wounds in action awarded since 1945 comes from the stock that was created just for that campaign. Say what you will about the horror of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mute evidence of those awards is enough for me.

As you may recall from yesterday, our young navy counter-intelligence officer Tom had been ordered to clean up the zone of naval occupation control south of Yokohama. Corruption was rife, and the Army was threatening to take jurisdiction if the situation was not improved. McArthur's General Headquarters was not happy.

Tom was be placed in charge of a squad of Japanese police officers, once he completed his orientation with Army CID. When complete, he rode the train south from Camp Zama to take up his duties. These were to employ Host Nationals with their language and cultural skills to bust up the black market in the Honcho-ku neighborhood outside Yokosuka Base.

Yoko is a steamy sultry place in the summer, and and chilly and damp in the winter months. In the summer, wearing a civilian jacket and tie make the shirt cling to the skin. With the economic miracle of Japan, Inc, still decades away, there was little pollution and the   skies were still clear. On many days, the majestic cone of Fujiyama could be seen clearly, south across the gray waters of the Sagami-wan.

It was such a day when Tom arrived at the police headquarters, he was briefed extensively on the local area. He was informed of a warehouse that held tons of old K rations intended to support the troops in the field. If he had any use for the stuff, he was told to help himself.

Developed from the Air Corps bail-out emergency food pack, the K-ration was first issued to airborne troops in 1942. The initial response from the field was positive, since the K-rat was light in weight, contained a variety of food products, and fit in the pocket of the M-1943 field jacket.

The Cracker Jack Corporation was awarded the contract, since their famous caramel corn product was exactly the right size, and their experience with waxed paper packaging was the industry standard.

All meals contained two packages of dried hardtack biscuits, four cigarettes, gum, sugar and a P-38 can opener to liberate the contents of the small food tins, which included cheese and meat, and powdered beverages. Late production meals included a disposable wooden spoon. By war's end, millions of K-rations had been produced, but the army had lost the use for them. Cracker Jack made the last of them in 1945, and like the Purple Heart, they had outstanding shelf life, and were issued as late as the Vietnam War.

Always an enterprising fellow, Tom picked up a couple of cases and took them out to his Japanese police squad. His chief of detectives rationed them out and the men went wild opening them up and dining on the exotic contents. It was great, since they offered Tom their ramen noodles in savory broth in exchange.

Tom's translator gravely told him that the policemen, all combat veterans, were commenting that they now knew why the US troops were so good, since they were so well fed.

At this point, Tom was not aware that his Chief of Detectives had been a Master Sergeant in Manchuria, and that the whole team had prior seen action in China or the Pacific. Accordingly, the Chief thought they would best be employed on cases relating to corruption in the military, and the hemorrhaging of valuable material from the ship repair facility into the local economy.

One day his assistant came into the office near the gate, saying that the men had requested more K-rations.

Times were still hard on the Kanto Plain, and Tom looked up, asking if they needed additional food to eat. The Assistant gave his best inscrutable look through his round dark glasses. He said, tactfully, that the meals were indeed very good, but that the “the biscuits had also proven to be very useful.”

The biscuits were the product of centuries of refinement. They were nearly indestructible on the shelf, and could handle heavy handling with minimal damage. If kept dry, they were nearly eternal.

Tom was curious at that, since the best use he could think of for the things was as paperweights. The Translator took him into the interrogation room and gestured to the current prisoner, who was known to be a hard case, and determined not to rat out his partners in the Yakuza.

The buzz-cut prisoner had missed a few meals prior to starting the questioning session. When Tom saw him, he had just finished gnawing through a stack of K ration crackers.

Once he had finished his meal, the police team gathered around him, loudly slurping their tea. No one can slurp tea or noodles like the Japanese, a talent I learned at the late night noodle-carts outside the base years afterward.

As Tom said later, “I always thought it amazing how thirsty a prisoner had to be before they began to talk in exchange for a sip of water.”

This particular subject of interrogation loved the crackers so much that he introduced Tom's team to all his friends and associates.

Tom was so impressed that he wanted to send a thank-you letter to the manufacturer of the K rations, but the wartime contract did not permit the Cracker Jack people to put their customer service address on the box.

He told me that his squad was operating under Martial Law rules, and not the provisions of the Army Field Manual on Interrogation.

Today, he suspects he would not be getting a medal for busting up the black market. Instead, in the current environment, he would be getting a General Court Martial.    

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com