Behind the Wire

A chapter

Behind the Wire

The drive from Lake Arrowhead to Escondido was five hours of pure hell. My parents were arguing in the front seat about everything and nothing: money, directions, whose fault it was we were running late. My sister and I were trapped in the back, watching Southern California’s incomplete freeway system crawl past while listening to another round of greatest hits on the car radio. Who spent too much, who didn’t call ahead, who forgot to bring the right gift for whom.

Grandmother was waiting in the driveway before we’d even shut off the engine. She started complaining while our car doors were still opening. The suitcase was too heavy, we were later than expected, why didn’t we leave earlier like she’d told us to? Her smile appeared instantly when she noticed someone might be watching from a neighboring house, then vanished the moment she turned back to us.

I fled immediately to the TV room, sinking into the big easy chair surrounded by her obsessions. UFO magazines scattered across every surface, Erik von Däniken’s books about ancient astronauts stacked in towers, Buddha statues competing for space with alien conspiracy theories.

I’d read those von Däniken books cover to cover, all of them, several times over during previous visits. Chariots of the Gods, Gods from Outer Space, mysteries of vanished civilizations and ancient technology. I was seventeen, bored out of my mind, and desperate to disappear into theories about anything other than my family.

Christmas morning arrived quietly. Everyone sleeping off Christmas Eve tensions, the house finally still except for sounds coming from the kitchen. I needed to escape from that chair full of ridiculousness about visitors from outer space, from the atmosphere that had followed us across three counties. The kitchen offered refuge. No magazines about flying saucers, no family arguments, just the steady rhythm of someone working.

I found my grandfather already deep into Christmas dinner preparation. Standing straight as an arrow while dicing onions for stuffing. Every movement precise, practiced. Knives sharp, cutting board clean, and his ingredients arranged with military efficiency. He had the timing calculated to feed fifteen people without a single dish going cold, the kind of logistical planning that looked effortless but revealed decades of experience feeding hungry men under pressure.

The kitchen smelled like sage and butter, onions sweating in cast iron. Steam rose from pots on every burner. He moved between stove and counter without wasted motion, checking seasoning with a wooden spoon, adjusting heat with quick twists of his wrist.

My parents had mentioned he could be moody, made an irritating noise with his teeth, and kept to himself mostly. But watching him work, I saw something different. This man took feeding people seriously. He couldn’t stand the thought of someone leaving his table hungry. The care was there in every careful measurement, every tested seasoning, buried under years of gruffness and distance.

Table of contents

Behind the Wire

• Authors Note
• Content Warning and Disclaimer
• Prologue: Christmas Kitchen
• Shanghai Nights
• Orders to Evacuate
• Storm Passage
• Three Days in Paradise
• War Begins
• The Fighting Cook
• The Last Meal
• Propaganda and Plunder
• The March to Manila
• The Ten-Man Rule
• The Hell Ship
• Osaka
• First Christmas in Hell
• Matsumoto
• The Boy Corporal
• The Jail Cell
• Mostly Inhuman
• Fire from the Sky
• Freedom
• Coming Home
• After the Kitchen Fell Silent
• Appendix: Vessels and Stations