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142   The Fall of Japan

sat down. [[yellow highlight]] [[underlined]] Eight [[/underlined]] of them were Americans.[[/yellow highlight]] The rest were Japanese soldiers. The truck went out through the rear gate and down the road to a place called [[yellow highlight]]Aburayama,[[/yellow highlight]] several miles south of Fukuoka City. In a field surrounded by dense undergrowth, the prisoners were led down from the back of the vehicle and arranged in a loose line. They were stripped to shorts or pants and forced to watch as Japanese soldiers began to dig several large holes in the ground. The Americans said nothing to each other.

Shortly after 10:00 A.M., a first lieutenant from a Japanese unit training for guerrilla warfare stepped forward and brandished a gleaming silver sword. As one of the Americans was prodded forward and forced to a kneeling position, the Japanese officer wet his finger and ran it across the sharp edge of his weapon. Then he looked down at the bowed head of the prisoner and gauged the distance. Suddenly his sword flashed in the sun and crashed against the bared neck. It cut nearly all the way through to the Adam's apple. 

The line of captives silently watched their comrade die. Some turned away. Others saw the body roll sideways onto the grass.

A second flier was pushed forward to be killed. A third, a fourth was decapitated. The fifth one was butchered by an executioner who required two strokes to sever the head.

The Japanese officers introduced a new torture on the sixth prisoner. He was brought in front of a group of spectators and held with his arms behind his back. A Japanese ran toward the American and smashed him in the stomach with the side of his hand. The flier slumped forward but was pulled upright again to receive another karate blow. Three, four times, the powerful chops to the body were repeated. When the victim did not die, his head was cut off. 

The seventh prisoner suffered the same cruelty from men practicing the art of killing with their bare hands. When he too survived the vicious karate, one of the officers, angered by his own failure, rushed up and kicked him in the testicles. The prisoner fell to the ground, his face contorted by nausea and pain. He pleaded, "Wait, wait," but his tormentors had no

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August 11-The Conspiracy Begins

pity. He was pulled into a kneeling position while the captors debated another manner of execution. They settled on [[yellow highlight]] kesajiri. Another sword glinted in the sun over the bowed form and cut down through his left shoulder and into the lungs. The American died in an froth of blood.[[/yellow highlight]]

The last prisoner had seen seven men hacked to death before his eyes. His last moments were a blurred image of blood, steel slashing through skin and bone, cries of pain from his friends and shouts of glee from his enemies. Now he knew it was his turn. He was pushed into the center of the maddened group of soldiers, who made him sit down on the ground. His hands were tied behind him. Ten feet away, another officer from a guerrilla unit raised a bow and placed an arrow on it. The American watched as the Japanese pulled it back, sighted on him, and let go. The arrow came at his head and missed. Three times the officer shot at the American, and the third arrow hit him just over the left eye. Blood spurted out and down his face.

Tired of the sport, his captors prodded him into the familiar kneeling position and chopped his head from his body. [[yellow highlight]] On the field of Aburayama, eight torsos stained the meadow grass.[/yellow highlight]]
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In China on August 11, control of the prisoner rescue operation was handed over from General Olmstead in Chungking to Colonel Richard Heppner in Kunming. Heppner would handle the next phase. As director of all undercover activities in China for the OSS, the colonel controlled networks of spies and saboteurs working throughout the mainland. From these he could draw personnel to mount the ambitious scheme.

As he labored over the details of the mission, a telegram came in from the advance base at Hsian, far to the north, at the edge of the vast Gobi Desert. Major Gus Krause, commanding officer of that vital espionage center, was advising Heppner that he was ready for any change in the war situation:

WE HAVE AVAILABLE HERE FULLY TRAINED AND EQUIPPED OBOE SUGAR SUGAR [OSS] PERSONNEL...TO DROP OR PLACE IN STRATEGIC AREAS.