_Some of the Japanese caves, such as this one, had been carefully
reinforced. Marine riflemen move warily to inspect it._]
These attacks on caves were a tricky business, because of orders not to
kill any civilians who were also inside many of them, hiding from the
fighting. Graf recounted his experiences further:
Throughout the campaign we were taking prisoners.
Seldom were they Japanese soldiers, instead Korean and Chamorro
laborers, both men and women, who mostly worked in the sugar
cane fields and processing plants. Chamorros were natives of
the islands, while the Koreans, of course, were brought over as
forced labor. Approaching us, hands up, and smiling and bowing the
Koreans would say in understandable broken English, “Me Korean, not
Japanese.” Some Japanese civilians were also captured. The Japanese
tradition was that the male members of the family were the dominant
members. Several times when we tried to feed newly captured women
and children first, the male would shove them aside and demand to
be first for rations. A few raps to the chest with a rifle butt
soon cured them of that habit.
As the sick, scared, and often starving civilians would emerge from
their hideouts, there were many pitiful scenes:
One sad incident I recall was when a captured civilian Japanese
woman came up to me. She was crying and when she got close to
me she started hitting me on the arm and pointing to my pack. I
did not know what she wanted until an interpreter came over and
explained that she wanted some food and water for her dead child.
She pointed to a wicker basket that contained her dead infant. I
gave her what she requested, and she placed the food and water in
the basket so that the child could have nourishment on the way to
meet the baby’s ancestors.
Physical conditions of many were pitiful. Every illness that we had
been briefed on was observed: leprosy, dengue fever, yaws and many
cases of elephantiasis. Most of them were skeleton thin, as they
had no nourishment for many days. Many were suffering from shock
caused by the shelling and bombing, and fright because they did not
have the vaguest idea as to what we would do to them. Civilians
caught in a war that was not of their making....
[Illustration: