JAPANESE SMELLS THE MADOYA

 

JOSEFINA LEÓN GUERRERO MARTÍNEZ

Josefina LG Martínez, a young mother in her 20s, was peacefully frying bananas in her home in Sinajaña one day in 1955. It was 1:30 in the afternoon and she was all alone in the house.

Out of the blue, the frightful appearance of an almost-naked, bearded man startled her when he pushed open the kitchen door.

His beard went down to his chest and his hair down to his shoulders. He held a gun and a saber hung from a rope around his waist. It had to have been a Japanese straggler.

The Japanese motioned with his fingers for her to keep silent, and nudged his gun against her ribs.

Thankfully, the menacing man only grabbed some bananas, both the ripe and also the fried bananas (madoya), saying "beru, beru." which must have been "taberu," Japanese for "to eat." Then he dashed back into the jungle near the house. On his way out he dropped two madoya!

MADOYA

Josefina contacted the police, however, and the Police Chief tasked Juan Unpingco Aguon and José Salas Bukikosa, two police officers who had previously been members of the Guam Combat Patrol that hunted Japanese runaway soldiers after the war, to track down this latest straggler.

But he was never to be seen again. His bones probably lie somewhere in the dense vegetation of the island.