Kyoto, Japan
Nonna Ikari invite me to visit the Imperial Hero Museum just a short walk away from the park. This museum held the records of every single struggle the Japanese face during World War Z , that includes iconic wartime photograph, important documents, the weapons used during the war, and records of individual stories told by the civilians and soldiers during the conflict to immortalize their stories for future generation to remember.
Nonna is looking at a photograph of a group of soldiers. They're all are line up in a typical way when a group of people is taking a picture. Yet, instead of looking straight at the camera seriously like soldiers do, they seem try to make the silliest facial expresion they can muster to look as silly as possible.
Nonna focus her attention on one individual in the picture, a woman who had the expresion of mild annoyence while the rest of her comrades are having fun. That woman was Nonna herself when she just graduated bootcamp, a few months before the war start, and the rest of the soldiers are her comrades, one that she fought and bleed with during the war.
Under the photograph is a plaque, with an incription written on it that read. "In honor of the brave soldiers of the 3rd Company who bravely risk their life for the future of our country."
"Most people remember the American victory at the Battle of Hope as the starting point of our reclamation war against the undead. Yet, for us Japanese, the reclamation effort started way sooner before that."
"It was only three months after the fall of Tokyo. We have evacuated over 5 million civilians to Kamchatka, and our goverment had been working together with the Russian to achive some sort of deal that would be benificial for both parties."
"But when all that is happening, there's still tens of millions of refugees still stuck on the mainland. The JSDF made a proposal to the goverment to approve a second evacuation operation to rescue the remaining survivor. The plan was rejected, not because they don't want to, but it simply wasn't practical."
"The problem is, the goverment already has to many problem on their hands, and they coulnd't afford to divert valuable ressources on another large scale military operation. The initial evacuation is already taking up a lot of ressouces already. Plus, there's a question that if the hyphothetical evacuation was a success, where would all the refugees ended up in. Kamchatka is a no go, since it's already struggling with it's limited ressouce as it is. Bringing more people would guarantee a further outbreak and starvation."
"The JSDF high command however, refused to give up on the plan. Without the knowledge of the goverment, the JSDF high command secretly working on their plan for another evacuation operation. This wasn't done out of malicious intent of course, like i said, the goverment have to many things to worry about already."
"When the brass finally have a concrete plan of evacuation, one question remains, where would we evacuate these people to?"
"One member of the JSDF high command by the name of Lieutenant General Yamashita propose an idea so crazy that it might just work. He propose that the JSDF should built a long defensive line in the middle of Hokkaido, strecting from the east and west coast, seperating the sparsely populated north to the highly infested south."
"The plan was, once the line was set, the JSDF would made the northern part of the island a 'zombie free zone' for refugee to lived in, free from the threat of the undead while the defensive line would act as one giant wall seperating the refugee from the zombie horde."
"After they perfected the plan, and our goverment finally have some control over the situation, the JSDF high command presented their plan to the Prime minister. The plan was at first met with skepticism, but ultimately, the prime minister approved the plan."
"So, in the 21st of March, 2013, seven months after the first evacuation of the Japanese mainland is over, the JSDF high command launch a second evacuation attempt, along with an operation to reclaim the northern half of Hokkaido from the living dead. They called it; Operation Tengu."
"My unit was ship out from Kamchatka for Hokkaido the very same day high command announce the opperation. We made landfall the next day and began our march for the mountain line in the middle of the island."
"The defensive line high command had proposed was too long for our military in its current state to defend the line completely, since we suffered shortage of manpower after the great panic. The Army could only spare 15.000 men for this operation, a mere fraction of our pre-war height, and only half of those numbers were task for the reclaimation mission."
"Knowing this, the high command had made a decision to set the line at the mountainous region in the middle of the island. The mountain line would act as a natural barrier, since zombie aren't much of a hiker, so we could focus our effort to reinforce and guard the roads and the flatter area that leads to the other sides of the island."
"Our journey from our landing zone to our destination lasted two days. This is because the vehicle we brought were not enough to carry everyone. It's because the high command expect us to find additional means of transportation in the form of abandoned civilian vehicle and military vehicle from local Army base."
"Now, the problem with this plan however, is that most of these vehicle had been abandoned for months at a time, all of them had been exposed to the elements and the brutal Hokkaido winter for so long, most of them are not even operational. High command already knew this and suggest that we focus our attention on the army base and abandoned garage, since it definately protect the vehicle from the element."
"What the high command didn't account for, is that most these vehicle had been stolen, torn apart, or accidentally destroyed by panic survivors in hope of obtaining a mode of transportation. As such, when we began to search, we only found a handful that are still intact, and even fewer that could start their engine. Because searching for more vehicle would waste precious time, the officers present decide to just winged it and start driving."
"We ended up cramping more men into the trucks than they could handle, as such, many of them started breaking down in the middle of the road, forcing the other to stop and wait for them to be fixed. In some of those stops, we encounter a few zombies, usually a small horde, numbering around 20 to 40 who were drawn to our position from all the ruckus we made. Each time they showed up, we would ready our weapon and shoot at them. We told ourself to 'aim for the head' but because back at Kamchatka we haven't got enough time to train, our aim was a little rusty compare to the last time we fought the zombies in Tokyo. Luckily, there are more soldiers present than zombies, so those threat are dealed with pretty quickly."
"After two days on the road, we finally reach the point were we would split off and headed for our assigned sector and start building fortification. The 12th infantry battalion, the unit i was in, was assinged to a sector located between the town of Tsurui and Kushiro. We set up roadblocks and checkpoint on all roads that cut through the mountain line to prevent any zombies from breakingthrough. We also dug trenches along the areas we couldn't easily watch. The idea was that, since zombies weren't much of a climber, any zombies that tried to cross would fall and trapped inside the trenches. We would check the trenches from time to time and kill any zombies that was trap inside."
"What about food supplies? Surely the JSDF supply you guys with enough food for an operation this big."
She look at me with a bewildered expresion as if i was making a terrible joke.
"Enough supplies?! HAH! As if. The supplies we were given were barely enough to feed us for our two days march, by day one of us working, all of us had eaten all of our ration pack."
"Because of this, we were forced to scavange anything we could find to survive. Each company of the battalion will send two or three squads to find food. The food they find would go to their company, and their company alone, since feeding the entire battalion would be a nightmare."
"We look for food in every place we could think of. Sometimes we would loot from abandoned civilian cars on the sides of the road, sometimes some of them have a stash of canned food, instant noddles, powdered drink, medicine, and many more. On the first few days we look for food in the nearby towns, but we stop doing that since most of the shop had been looted."
"When we couldn't scavange, we would go hunting, with mixed result. One time, one of the squad in my company went on hunting and return only three hours later having shot not one, but four deers. We ate well that night and have many leftover to save for later. A few days later went it's my squad turn to hunt, we only came back with a seagull, despite spending half a day searching for prey. Another squad from different company went hunting for dears in the mountain, only for one of their members to be attack by a bear. On the bright side, they eat a delicious bear stew that night."
"Something we have in abundance however, was ammunition. After what happen in Tokyo where many unit found themself trap due to the lack of ammunition, this time, high command made sure that we have more than enough ammo to face down a large horde. We have a tent dedicated solely to store ammunition, and let me tell you, that tent was pack to the roof, literaly."
"Aside from the occasional hunting and scavenging mission, we spent the next few weeks building and improving our barricade and trenches. For the barricade we used a mixture of sandbags, abandoned cars, barb wires, and anything we could find. We set up machine gun nest, watchtowers, and communication hub all along the major highway that lead up to the north of the island."
"For the next few months, our daily routine consist of guarding the checkpoints, scavenging for food, patroling the line and taking out any zombies that get too close, improving our barriers; this time with landmines, etc."
"From time to time, survivors would show up at the checkpoint. When Yamashita line was near it's completion, the goverment task multiple ships, (some military, some civilians) to anchored all along the Japanese coastline to play a repeating radio message that basically saying the safety of the Yamashita line. The goal here is to give the surviving population that missed the second evacuation somewhere to go where they could reach a safe heaven safe from the zombies."
"Did it worked?"
"kind of, the number of refugees showing up at the checkpoint certainly increase after the beginning of the broadcast, but most of them are native citizen of Hokkaido who hasn't migrated north yet. We did get a few from other islands, but not that many compare to the locals."
"Our job was to check them of any bite, feed them, give them drink, and give them shelter on our camp after their long journey before they would be taken to a refugee camp further up north. All of the refugees we encounter had a tired look on their face, but they're usually had a look of relief when they reach the line."
"Sometimes, we would get a survivor that's already bitten. These guys usually had another person with them to carry them to the checkpoint. Those who were alone are to weak to even make it to the checkpoint, and most likely already accepting their fate."
"Those who reach our checkpoint and were already bitten usually hides the fact. But when we discovered their bite mark, the reaction were a mixed of denial, horror, and acceptence. Those who were bitten longer usually the first one to accept their fate, as they starting to feel their body shutting down. A few of them ask to do the job themself, but we wouldn't let them."
"Do the job themself?"
She made a gun gesture with her hand and point it at her head.
"Sometimes we also found a few bitten survivor who's in complete denial of their current state. They would cry out, very loudly i might add that 'this can't be happening' or 'you're lying!' And some other variation. I remember one guy who's bitten was in so much denial that he wrestle a rifle from a soldier's hand and aimed it wildly at everyone inside the medical tent. We tried to reason with him at first. That is until he try to pull the trigger at one of the medic. One of the soldier immidietly shot him in the head, killing him instantly. As for the medic the man tried to shoot, he was fine, the rifle safety was on and the guy didn't know how to switch it off."
"As for other cases, more often than not, it was the companion of the bitten person are the one who's in denial, those who were bitten were usually already accepted their fate, it was their travel companion, whether those are friends, family, or lover who were a pain in the ass to deal with."
"I've seen a lot of people defending and begging for their companion to be spared, sometimes they argued the bite is not deep enough to infect them, some pull a bullshit excuse that they're immune. One time my squad was confronted by a young woman who insisted that she were to be executed alongside her lover who's bitten. We, of course tried our best to to talk her out of it, but she was persistent, hugging her boyfriend tightly with tears and snot running through her face, all the while screaming and crying very loudly that even her boyfriend, who's at first touch by her devotion to him starting to get frustrated with her as well. After a while, one of my squadmate had enough of her bullshit and just shot both of them to save himself from further headache. He was court martialed because of that, but was only given light sentence due to the circumstances."
"But, other times, we sometimes found only a lone survivor, barely alive, staggering their way towards us with mixture of tiredness and horror on their face. When we rescue these type of survivor, they're usually very quiet, barely acknowledge us as we give them food or water. When we left them inside a shelter, they're eyes were blank, and just stare at nothing, often mumbling the name of someone or completely something incoherent. After that, sometimes they began to sobbed, or in the more extreme cases, scream and wails uncontrollably."
"We know those people must've witness an unimaginable horror on their way to here, probably losing a friend or loved ones to led them to such condition. We let them be most of them time. We knew people like that probably wanted to be left alone, atleast that was our understanding at the time, none of us were psychologist who's an expert at human emotion. So we didn't do anything most of the time in fear of saying the wrong thing to them and making things worse for them."
"Our little routine lasted for a little more than two months. Rescuing survivors, improving our defence, kill any approaching zombies, hunting for food, the whole thing. That is until one day, a lone survivor showed up at the checkpoint on top of a horse, riding it like the wind. Our protocol required every refugee with a vehicle to stop 50 meters away from the checkpoint until our troops give them permission to drive slowly to the checkpoint. This guy on the other hand, just ignored all the warning signs we put up, even ignored our warning shots."
"When he reach the checkpoint, he practically jump of his horse and grab the shirt of the soldier nearest to him. His action caught us off guard. We were about to point our guns at him to warn him to back off from the shock soldier when he started screaming. 'They're coming! They're coming!' He screamed with tears in his eyes. We didn't need to ask who they are, his face says it all. After we calmed him down, our sergeant simply ask him 'How many?'"
"He looked into the sergeant eyes with the look of despair and simply said 'thousands.' With that information, our sergeant began to barking orders for us to get ready. Some of us went for our camp to warn the others, while the radio operators contacted central command and brief them of the situation. Two guys were ordered to escort the man back to camp, while the rest of us prepare for battle."
"The man isn't lying, the sheer size of the horde caught us off guard. It was shocking how such a large horde could march on for so long without getting detected. But at the same time, it kinda wasn't. Most of our air force was grounded, we've long lost contact with our satelites, and even though we have lookouts from the other side of the line to warn us of this exact situation, the radio that they were equip with was pratically pulled out of storage after being neglected for years, so they probably notice the massive horde marching towards us and tried to warn us through the radio but are unable to. We later learned they try to send a few messenger to us but all of them were killed by the zombies."
"As we made visual contact with the horde, their sickening moaning sound started to getting louder and louder by the minute. Normally, once we made visual contact, we would request either an airstrike or an artillery strike, but we don't have those luxury here. All of our tanks and fighter jets had been mothballed and we lost most of our artillery when we evacuate the mainland, and the remainding artillery crew had transitioned as standard infantry. We still have a few 60mm and 81mm mortars with us, but that's the closest we have to an artillery."
"Even though we didn't have all those luxury we enjoyed in Tokyo, the terrain of which we fought in this time around gave us the advantage. We didn't have to deal with panicking civillians or worry about collateral damage anymore, and this time around we have a clear line of fire."
"The horde march slowly towards us from the highway and the empty ground surrounding it. As soon as they reach the range of 2500 meters, the mortars open fire. A few seconds later, the rounds rained down upon the horde, the front rank was hit the hardest, the shockwave and shrapnels send limbs flying all over the place. Some of them in the front rank step over our landmines and the explosion send their body part flying all over the place. Zombies in the front rank started to drop down like flies, while most of them weren't immidietly dead and simply becomes crawler, the mortar barrage still take out a large number of them."
"When the horde reach the distance of 800 meters, it was our snipers and machine gunners turn to open fire. They didn't fire with short burst this time around, instead they only fire one bullet every seconds to save ammo, and all of our machine gunners had been equip with long range scope to improve accuracy. The M2 Heavy Machine Gun were the most effective weapon at our disposal, with a sniper scope and only firing a single shot each seconds make it an extremely deadly weapon, even more deadly than the snipers. Those things could kill 4-7 zombies with a single shot without fail, thanks to it's large caliber and pin point accuracy."
"The constant and accurate fire from our mortars, machine guns and snipers kill hundreds of them in a matter of minutes. The dead soon started pilling on top of each other, and began to form a mountain of corpses. It slowed them down signifcantly, but it instead made us feel uneasy."
"Unlike in Tokyo were our job is to slowed them down, this time our job was to kill every last one of them, unless we risk our line being broken and risk the life of the citizens and refugees on the other side. The idea of not being able to fully retreat until every last one of them is dead didn't terrified us as much. When facing down the horde that was advancing very slowly shouldn't be terrifying, but knowing they were once human and the terrible moaning sound they produce is horrifying. We, the rifleman were restless, our finger rested on the trigger, waiting for the order to fire."
"After felt like hours, which in reality probably more like 20 minutes, the horde reach the killzone reserved for us rifleman. When the order for us to fire came, our line just rippled, it sounded like rain falling on rooftop. Second later, the zombies front rank drop down like dominos. After the first volley, we waited for order again. This was part of our new experimental doctrine for us rifleman. We were filed up in a single line and only fire when we're ordered to. This way, it make sure that we avoid the chaos during the evacuation to repeat again, and to ensure that each soldier had enough time to re-aim. We aim, shoot, reload, and kill all at the same time. It's also easier to keep track of ammo that way."
"The never ending fire cause the zombies to drop dead, one after the other in a very fast rate. When we first saw the horde and the sheer number of zombies within it, we thought it would be a repeat of Tokyo. But thanks to the more defensible terrain, a competent leadership who's able to keep order within the ranks, and a new tactic developed specifically to fight the undead finally gave us the edge to effectively and efficiently fight back. Our earlier nervousness at the sight of zombies kept on coming while walking over their fallen comrades had dissipated and was replace with optimism. We were like 'holy shit, we can do this.'"
"We continued to endlessly fire rounds of lead at the advancing zombies for another 20 minutes. By the time the horde, if you can still call it that, reach the 300 meters mark, most of the zombies were nothing more than than a pile of unmoving corpses. Five minutes later, none of them were standing."
"The aftermath of the battle was nothing short of haunting. The number of bloody corpses lying under the sun was staggering. As far away as eye can see, it was nothing but piles upon piles of dead body."
"Even though it was a very haunting and dreadful sight, it also bring us one thing. Hope."
"For the first time since the great panic, we're able to fought off a horde of this magnitude without losing a single man. At the time, such feat was nothing short of a miracle."
"Thankfully for us, central command had sent a Battle Sanitation unit to clean up the battlefield. What was left for us to do was return to our tents to take a well deserved rest."
"We later learned from the Battle Sanitation unit that we've killed 5143 zombies that day. They spent all afternoon and well into the night disposing all of the body. As it turns out, every single landmines we've buried had been stepped on by the zombie horde. This made it easier for them to dispose of the body without the fear of accidentally triggering one of the mines. But it add more things in our to-do list in the future to re-plant those mines."
"Looking back now, that battle was nothing compare to what i will go through in the reclaimation campaign. But at the time, it felt like we had done the impossible. There are no large party held to celeberate 'our first victory' over the undead, the piles of rotting corpses lying a few hundred meters away from our camp made it impossible. Plus, we still have a job to guard the checkpoint."
"But i did notice their are a few small scale celeberation in squad level. I witness a soldier taking out a bottle of whiskey from his backpack and share it with his squad member. There's something else i can't really explain, but that day, and a few days after that, there's something change in the air, like a possitive aura suddenly hit our camp with full force."
"Like i said, i can't really explain it. But i can tell you, that night i remember feeling good. I felt better since the war began. Sure there's still famine and internal conflict to deal with, and the economy were in shambles. But atleast now i know, we have a fighting chance."
"That night, for the first time since the war began, i slept like a baby."
