Lie on this table, don’t scream.
Five words, English.
But Sori hears them in Japanese, her mind translating what she’s been warned about for months.
The metal table is cold against her spine.
The overhead light burns white.
She’s 22 from Okinawa, and she knows what happens to women who lose wars.
The American soldier isn’t holding a weapon.
He’s holding something silver, something that catches the light.
Her breath stops.
There are 43 Japanese women in this Philippines field hospital captured after Lee.
Sori worked radio intercepts.
Tomoko beside her, 19, assembled munitions.
Ko, 28, was a field nurse.
All of them heard the same warnings.
America Ginwa Akumadab.
Americans are demons.
They do things to women, medical things, experiments.
The numbers make it worse.
Over 5,000 Japanese women captured across the Pacific by January 1945.
Zero reported medical assaults in US custody records.
But Suri doesn’t know that second number.
She only knows the first.
The silver thing moves closer.
The soldier, Private Miller, 23, from Ohio, says something she doesn’t understand.
The interpreter, a nayw woman, translates, “He needs to listen to your breathing.
” Breathing? Why would demons care about breathing? Shinumay Nijigoku.
Hell before death.
That’s what Lieutenant Yamamoto told them would happen.
That’s why he gave them each a gift before the Americans broke through.
Small, white, deadly.
Sori is wrapped in cloth tucked in her hair.
One bite, 7 seconds.
Better than whatever this is.
The cold metal touches her ribs through the thin prison uniform.
Not skin, fabric.
She flinches.
Miller pulls back, says something soft to the interpreter.
Antiseptic smell fills her nose.
Sharp chemical like the field hospitals where Japanese doctors no different.
Cleaner somehow.
Tomoko was crying on the next table.
Silent tears.
Following orders.
Don’t scream.
The nurse checking her, Corporal Susan Williams, 26, from Iowa, stops, writes something on a clipboard, moves gently, too gently for what Sori expects.
Her heart hammers so hard she wonders if the American can hear it through his silver instrument.
He’s listening, writing, not hurting, not yet.
The white sheet beneath her smells like soap.
Real soap.
When did she last smell that? The fabric is rough against her palms where she grips it, waiting.
Every muscle coiled, but the metal instrument in his hand isn’t what she thought.
The stethoscope touches her skin through fabric.
She stops breathing entirely.
Three months ago, Ewima, Captain Nakamura stands before 200 female auxiliaries.
His words cut like glass.
The Americans inject diseases.
They test chemicals.
They document everything while you scream.
He shows photographs.
Chinese women from unit 731.
But he says Americans did it.
The lies layer like sediment.
Truth buried beneath.
Scori believed every word.
Why wouldn’t she? The photographs were real.
The screams in those images real.
Now Miller listens to her lungs, moves the stethoscope.
Upper left, upper right, lower left.
The rubber tube coils like a snake.
His gloved fingers never touch skin.
Professional, clinical, exactly like the warning video showed, except for one detail.
He keeps stopping, asking through the interpreter, “Does this hurt? Are you comfortable?” Demons don’t ask about comfort.
America.
The phrase loops in her mind, but Miller’s eyes are tired.
Human tired.
He has coffee stains on his medical uniform.
A photo tucked in his chest pocket, barely visible.
Someone waiting at home.
97% of captured Japanese women expected torture.
That’s not propaganda.
That’s US intelligence estimates from post capture interviews.
The Japanese military distributed cyanide pills to every female auxiliary.
Standard issue.
Like ammunition, like bandages, like the lies about what Americans do to women.
Harumi 31 on table 3 has her pill wrapped in silk sewn into her collar.
She was at Saipan saw women jump from cliffs rather than be captured.
Mothers throwing children first then following because of stories because of warnings about medical experiments.
The thermometer slides under Sori’s tongue.
Tastes like metal and alcohol.
Miller waits.
Counts.
The tent canvas flaps in the wind.
Diesel generators hum outside.
Other women breathing, crying, not screaming, following orders.
Even here, Susan Williams checks Tomoko’s lymph nodes.
Gentle fingers on her throat.
Tomoko flinches, expecting strangulation.
Gets medical palpation instead.
The disconnect breaks something in her expression.
Confusion worse than fear.
He’s checking for tuberculosis.
The interpreter says it clearly slowly like she’s explaining to children, which in a way she is.
Children raised on specific nightmares fed particular fears.
Taught that capture meant things worse than death.
Sori’s pill weighs nothing, costs everything.
7 seconds to freedom.
Instead, she’s lying still while an enemy soldier documents her temperature, writes notes, moves to the next patient.
professional, routine, boring even.
Then the translator says something that makes no sense.
He’s checking for tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis in the middle of war.
The words come from her.
First time she’s spoken since capture.
The interpreter, Mary Tanaka, 25, from California, nods.
Explains about preventable diseases, about Geneva Convention medical requirements, about protecting prisoner health.
The field hospital spends $4.
50 per day per p on medical care.
Japan spent 12, sometimes nothing.
These numbers won’t be declassified for decades, but the evidence surrounds them.
Fresh bandages, real medicine, clean instruments.
Sori watches Dr.
Bernard Collins, 39, from Boston, examine Ko.
He finds infected wounds from coral cuts.
starts cleaning them immediately.
Iodine stings, Ko gasps.
But it’s medical sting.
Healing sting, not interrogation pain.
Uso da us.
It’s a lie.
It must be a lie.
Harumi whispers it like a prayer.
Because if this is real medical care, then what else was false? What else did command lie about? The rabbit hole opens beneath them.
Miller takes blood samples, explains through Mary, checking for malaria, deni, parasites, diseases that killed more Japanese soldiers than bullets, diseases their own military ignored in them.
The women, the expendable ones.
Now enemies care more about their blood than their secrets.
Nurse Patricia Roberts, 30, carefully labels each vial, Sori’s name, number, date.
Not for experiments, for treatment.
The realization hits like vertigo.
The ground tilts.
Everything she knew inverts.
Tomoko starts crying harder.
Not from fear now, from something worse.
Recognition.
She had deni 6 months ago.
Japanese medics gave her nothing.
Told her to endure.
Now Americans are testing her blood to help her.
The cognitive dissonance cracks something fundamental.
Susan notices bruising on Tomaco’s ribs.
Old bruising.
healing yellow green.
She photographs it, documents it, evidence, but not against Tommo.
For her, the antiseptic smell grows familiar.
Alcohol swabs, iodine, real medicine, not the watered herbs Japanese medics gave women.
Not the comfort women vitamins that were just sugar pills.
Actual treatment.
Dr.
Collins finds something during Ko’s examination.
Stops.
Call Susan over.
They whisper.
Look at Ko’s back.
She tenses, waiting for violence.
Gets a heated blanket instead.
They’re looking at scars.
Uniform scars.
Deliberate patterns.
Mary translates softly.
These wounds, they’re not from combat.
The tent goes quiet.
Even the generator seems to pause.
43 women collectively hold their breath.
Because those scars have origins, stories, punishments from their own officers for infractions, real and imagined, Collins documents everything carefully, thoroughly, like evidence for a trial nobody expects yet.
The nurse notices old scars on Sori’s back and suddenly everything stops.
The scars are uniform, deliberate, not from combat, from bamboo.
Dr.
Collins counts them.
17 parallel lines across Sori’s back.
Punishment marks.
Susan photographs each one.
The camera clicks like a typewriter.
Documentation, evidence, the kind that ends up in war crimes trials nobody imagines yet.
70% of female Japanese PS show signs of prior abuse from their own forces.
This statistic will emerge from medical examinations like this one.
Right now, it’s just Collins writing pattern consistent with systematic corporal punishment.
Sori knows why each scar exists.
Late to morning assembly, three strikes.
Dropped rice ration, three strikes.
Crying after news of her brother’s death at Saipan, five strikes.
Refusing an officer’s comfort request, six strikes.
The last one almost killed her.
Infection, fever, no treatment.
just told to endure.
G now American hands catalog Japanese cruelty moto hidoi.
Resist the soldiers.
It gets worse.
That’s what Sergeant Itto told them.
Their own soldiers, not enemies.
They’re protectors who protected nothing but themselves.
Natsuko, 27, on table 5, was a comfort station survivor, not voluntary, conscripted.
The medical exam reveals internal damage, treatable damage that was never treated.
Dr.
Collins prescribes antibiotics, real ones.
Penicellin worth more than gold in 1945, given to an enemy woman who expected death.
The medical charts become testimonies.
Each injury tells its story.
Broken ribs healed wrong.
No medical attention after beatings.
Malnutrition markers.
Officers ate while auxiliaries starved.
Untreated infections.
Medicine saved for combat troops.
Never support women.
Mary translates questions gently.
Who did this? When? How often? Some women answer, some stay silent.
Both responses get documented.
No pressure, just options.
Sori’s throat burns with words she’s never said aloud.
about Lieutenant Hayashi who liked his sake and his bamboo stick equally.
About the night raids on women’s barracks that command pretended didn’t happen.
About friends who took their pills rather than endure another sunrise.
The white sheet beneath her is soaked with sweat.
Now fear sweat becomes confession sweat because these Americans are writing down truths that would get her executed in Japanese custody.
Susan’s fingers trace one particularly deep scar.
Gentle, professional.
She asks Mary to translate, “This one’s infected.
Still, we need to clean it properly.
The iodine burns like judgment, like evidence, like the opposite of everything she expected.
Tears come not from pain, from the unbearable kindness of enemies who treat wounds instead of creating them.
” The doctor writes something on her chart.
Priority one medical.
Priority one means immediate intervention, but not what they think.
Mary explains while Susan prepares treatment.
Priority medical status, extra rations, psychological evaluation, private quarters if needed.
The words don’t compute.
In Japanese military, priority meant officers first, women last.
Here it means most traumatized first.
100% of priority 1 female PSWs receive psychological evaluation.
89% show PTSD symptoms from Japanese military service, not from capture, from before, from their own side.
Scori sits up slowly.
The examination room spins.
Not from illness, from cognitive reorganization.
Every syninnapse rewiring.
Every assumption collapsing, the pill in her hair feels like an anchor to a drowning world view.
Dr.
Elizabeth Morgan, 41, psychiatrist from Baltimore, enters with a different clipboard, different questions through Mary.
Have you experienced violence from your own forces? Do you have nightmares? Do you feel safe now? Safe now as prisoners.
The concept breaks language itself.
Naz Carrera Washinsetsu Nano.
Why are they being kind? Harumi asks from her table.
Nobody answers because the answer invalidates everything.
If Americans are kind, then Japanese command lied.
If they lied about this, they lied about everything.
The emperor, the war, the necessity of death before capture.
Natsuko starts talking slowly about the comfort station, about officers who visited, names, ranks, dates.
Mary translates, Dr.
Morgan writes.
Susan holds Natsuko’s hand.
Enemy women protecting her more than her own nation ever did.
The pencil scratches on paper like testimony being born, like truth replacing propaganda, like evidence accumulating for trials nobody sees coming.
Warm blankets arrive.
real wool, not the threadbear cotton they shivered under for months.
Tommo wraps herself completely, disappears inside American kindness, cries harder because gentleness hurts more than cruelty when you’re prepared only for cruelty.
Collins returns with treatment plans, antibiotics for infections, surgery scheduled for Ko’s improperly healed fracture, vitamin supplements for everyone, dental care.
70% have untreated cavities.
Psychological counseling twice weekly.
The same military spending millions on bombs spends dollars on enemy women’s teeth.
Sori remembers her first day of auxiliary training.
The instructor saying, “You are expendable.
Your suffering honors the emperor.
Now enemies treat her as unexpendable.
Her suffering matters to them for documentation, for justice, for humanity.
She didn’t expect.
Mary mentions Geneva Convention, international law, protection requirements.
Words that meant nothing in Japanese service mean everything in American custody.
Why did Suri cry during the exam? Because it was the first gentle medical touch in years.
Because enemies cared more than allies.
Because everything was backwards.
3 days later, Sori makes a decision that would have meant execution in Japan.
She agrees to document the abuse, naming names.
The interrogation room isn’t what propaganda described.
No torture devices, just tables, chairs, a stenographer named Dorothy Williams, 28, from Detroit.
Her typewriter waits like a witness stand.
Major James Thompson, 42, prosecutor from Chicago, explains through Mary, “This is voluntary.
For war crimes documentation, you can stop any time.
400 testimonies will be collected from female PS.
23 war crimes trials will use them, but today it’s just speaking truths that burn her throat.
” Lieutenant Hayashi, Infantry, 43 years old, stationed Lee, August through December 1944.
Dorothy types.
Each keystroke documents what Japan would bury.
Sire describes the beatings, the night visits, the women who disappeared, the suicide orders, the comfort station recruitment.
That wasn’t recruitment.
Uragiri Mono Ninata.
I became a traitor.
The thought comes unbidden.
But traitor to what? To officers who beat her? To a system that called her expendable to lies about American devils while Japanese demons lived in her barracks.
Major Thompson asks about specific dates, locations, other witnesses.
Suri names seven women.
Three are dead.
Pills worked.
Four are here.
Tommo, Harumi, Natsuko, Ko.
All priority one.
All carrying stories that contradict everything Japan taught them about honor.
The coffee on Thompson’s desk grows cold.
Bitter smell fills the room.
Outside, Filipino birds sing.
Life continues while testimony accumulates about its systematic destruction.
She describes the rape of Midori, 17, who took her pill after the execution of Yuki, who refused an officer.
The medical supplies diverted from auxiliary hospitals to officer comfort stations.
Each word is evidence.
Each sentence is betrayal.
Each paragraph is justice.
Dorothy stops typing.
Drinks water.
Continues.
Professional documenting hell with secretarial precision.
Thompson shows photographs, Japanese military documents captured at Lee.
Can you identify anyone? She can.
Lieutenant Hayashi, Captain Nakamura, Major Sato, who ordered comfort station expansions.
All there, all documented by their own military’s meticulous recordkeeping.
The same thoroughess that tracked rice rations, tracked atrocities.
Coronto, will this really become trials? Suri asks Mary, “Yes, International Military Tribunal.
Your testimony matters.
Matters.
Her suffering matters.
Her words matter.
Her truth matters.
” After 22 years of being told she doesn’t matter.
Enemies say she does.
The typewriter clacks like ammunition being loaded.
But this ammunition is words, evidence, truth, more powerful than the bullets that brought her here.
6 months later, she’s standing in a place she never imagined, a classroom.
Former PS become medical assistants, teaching hygiene to Japanese civilians.
October 1946, occupied Tokyo.
Sori stands before 30 Japanese women in a converted warehouse.
Chalk ready, blackboard cleaned.
She wears a white medical apron, the same fabric as that first examination sheet, transformed into purpose.
1,200 former female PS work in Allied medical programs postwar.
They translate, teach, heal.
Prove that enemies can become teachers when propaganda dies.
Basic sanitation prevents 70% of communicable diseases.
She writes it in Japanese.
The women copy carefully.
Former factory workers, war widows, survivors learning to survive peace.
None know she was P.
Just that she works with Americans, that she knows medicine, that she came back from somewhere unnamed.
Private Robert Chen, 24, her former guard, now colleague, helps distribute supplies, soap, real soap, bandages, vitamins, things Japanese military hoarded while civilians suffered.
Things Americans distribute freely.
Watashi waikitau.
I am alive.
The thought comes daily.
When she expected death, she got education, medical training, purpose, a chance to repair what war destroyed.
She teaches wound cleaning.
Shows them iodine’s proper use.
Explains infection signs.
Information that would have saved her own scars from festering.
information Japanese military deemed unnecessary for women to know.
Chalk dust covers her fingers.
Familiar now, like stethoscopes, like medical charts, like the weight of responsibility to speak truth in a nation built on lies.
One woman raises her hand.
Why do Americans share medicine with enemies? Sori remembers asking Mary the same question.
Remembers the answer.
Because suffering is universal.
Healing should be too.
She repeats it now.
Watches confusion cross faces.
The same confusion she felt on that metal table.
When enemies proved kinder than allies.
When medical care replaced expected torture.
When humanity emerged where propaganda promised demons.
Children’s voices drift through windows playing.
Laughing.
Sounds impossible two years ago when B29s owned the sky.
Now those same planes bring medicine, food, teachers like her.
Robert checks vaccination records.
Efficient, professional.
They work together, former prisoner and former guard, proving reconciliation is possible when truth replaces propaganda.
She demonstrates thermometer sterilization, proper bandage wrapping, basic diagnostic signs.
Each lesson undermines what Japanese military taught.
that suffering was honor, endurance was virtue, death was better than capture.
The white apron carries stains now iodine, ink, purpose.
The same white that once meant vulnerability now means service.
The sheet became shroud became uniform.
A student asks, “Were you a military nurse?” No, I learned after the war.
Truth omission both.
In 1952, she returns to the room with a metal table.
This time as the examiner.
Same hospital, same table, different side.
Clark Air Base, Philippines, 1952.
Suri adjusts her stethoscope.
Head nurse now.
The metal table that terrified her seven years ago waits for the next patient.
Korean war refugees arrive daily, scared, hungry, carrying propaganda about American medical experiments.
She recognizes their fear, lived it, survived it.
Now she dissolves it with the same gentle professionalism Dr.
Collins showed her.
The same patience Susan demonstrated, the same humanity that shattered her worldview and rebuilt it stronger.
Her daughter sits in the corner, four years old, named Patricia after nurse Patricia Roberts.
Patty speaks English and Japanese.
knows nothing of comfort stations, of bamboo beatings, of pills hidden in hair.
Knows only that mama helps people.
That helping is purpose.
That kindness transcends nationality.
40% of P medical program graduates continue healthc careers.
Sori leads them, trains Filipino nurses, treats Korean refugees, tends Chinese evacuees.
Each patient carrying their own propaganda, their own fears, their own pills, sometimes hidden in hair or clothes.
Coryawatashi notumi nosugunai.
This is my atonement, though what sin needs atoning? Believing lies, surviving truth, choosing life when death seemed honor.
A Korean woman enters, 20, terrified, clutching belongings, expecting experiments.
Sori remembers, approaches slowly, speaks through translator.
You’re safe.
This is just examination like checking breathing.
The woman lies down, rigid, waiting for horror.
Gets healthc care instead.
The cycle continues.
Fear becomes confusion becomes understanding becomes healing.
Propaganda dies one patient at a time.
Suri’s original medical chart hangs framed in her office.
Priority one medical, multiple trauma indicators, recommended psychological support.
Below it, her nursing certification, her teaching credentials, her life after expected death.
The stethoscope weight feels natural now.
Extension of her hands, tool of healing where she expected tool of torture.
She listens to the Korean woman’s lungs, hears fear in the breathing, recognizes it, works through it.
Patty draws in her coloring book.
American flag, Japanese flag, side by side.
No context of war, just colors, just cloth.
Just what mama taught.
People are people.
Suffering is suffering.
Healing is healing.
The white medical sheet on today’s table is pristine like the one seven years ago.
But now Scori knows its purpose.
Not vulnerability, not examination, connection.
the fabric that links helper to helped, past to present, fear to hope.
Lie down, don’t worry.
She says it in Japanese to the Korean woman.
Different words, same salvation.
The table that terrified becomes the table that heals forever, endlessly, purposefully.
